The Betrayer

by Daniel Judson

  Cat was overwhelmed with a sickening mix of fear and nausea.

  Fiermonte said to Smith, “Get the redhead’s cell phone.”

  Smith stepped to Haley and held out his hand.

  She didn’t move — refused to, in fact.

  Smith looked at Fiermonte, as if for permission. Fiermonte nodded once, and Smith began patting Haley’s pockets till he felt her phone. Reaching in, he dug out the device and tossed it to Fiermonte.

  Fiermonte caught it and began issuing orders — there were two rooms upstairs, and he wanted Cat in one and Johnny’s girlfriend in the other.

  He didn’t once look at Cat.

  “We need to make sure they don’t even think about escaping,” he said to Smith. “Do you understand me?”

  The undercover cop nodded. He quickly took point, leading Cat and Haley toward the stairs. The dark-haired woman began to follow, her own gun still drawn and Cat’s Sig tucked into her waistband.

  Fiermonte told her to stop, and she did. He approached her, removed Cat’s Sig, then said, “Go ahead.”

  Only then did Fiermonte glance at Cat.

  “I’m sorry it has to be this way,” he said. “But he’s left me no other choice.”

  Cat was too stunned to say anything.

  In deep shock, her exhaustion overtaking her.

  That familiar desire to surrender.

  Fiermonte saw the look on her face and said, “You’ll understand soon enough, Cat.” He turned to Smith. “Let us know when she’s ready.”

  Ready for what? Cat thought.

  Smith continued toward the stairs. The dark-haired woman moved, too, driving Cat and Haley to follow the undercover cop.

  Cat looked at Fiermonte as she climbed the stairs.

  She remembered him finding her up in Chappaqua.

  Taking her to his place.

  What she saw Fiermonte doing now was an all-too-familiar sight — he was talking on his cell phone.

  “We’re here,” he said. He listened for a moment, then said, “No, we’re going with plan B. We’re drawing him out tonight, once and for all.”

  Drawing out who? Cat thought.

  Dickey?

  Then he ended the call and walked to the Russian.

  Still seated on the couch, his eyes still on the floor.

  “There’s a back room,” Fiermonte said. “After we take care of Cat, why don’t you go there and rest? We won’t need you for a few hours.”

  Gregorian nodded but said nothing.

  The last thing Cat saw was Fiermonte touching the Russian’s shoulder with the same tender concern.

  Smith reached the top of the stairs first. He felt the wall for a light switch, flipped it, but the hallway remained dark.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  The ceiling-mounted light fixture had no lightbulb.

  The dark-haired woman lit the narrow hallway with a small pocket light.

  Instead of splitting Cat and Haley, Smith ushered them into one small room, where they stood side by side.

  He flipped the switch by the door, and this time the light worked.

  A weak bulb — twenty-five watts, tops — but it was enough.

  He said then that he needed them to undress.

  Cat laughed. “Fuck you.”

  The dark-haired woman pulled back the hammer of her semiautomatic. She was aiming at Cat’s head and returning the small flashlight to her pocket.

  “Don’t make this difficult,” Smith said. He clearly wasn’t in the mood for a hassle. His eyes were those of a man who hadn’t slept in a long time. Cat noticed, too, that he was rubbing his chest as if it were sore.

  She also noticed that he was wearing something under his shirt.

  A bullet-resistant vest.

  A quick look at the dark-haired woman told Cat she was wearing one as well.

  “If we have to, we’ll bring our Russian friend up,” Smith said. “I’m sure he’d be happy to tear your clothes off for us. Your brother cost him part of his two front teeth tonight. From what I understand, he was quite fond of his smile.”

  Cat still didn’t move.

  “Now,” Smith said. “Please.”

  Cat looked again at the woman, this time more closely, and saw the cuts in her scalp — cuts that Cat had made when they crossed paths up in Chappaqua.

  With cold, detached, strangely lifeless eyes, the woman continued to aim her semiautomatic at Cat.

  But now her target wasn’t Cat’s head.

  It was Cat’s knees.

  “He needs the girl more than he does you,” Smith warned. “I don’t need you naked. Down to your underwear will be fine.”

  Cat moved first. It was slow going because she was one-handed. Haley looked away, and so did Smith, but the dark-haired woman watched Cat carefully.

  “You, too, red,” Smith said to Haley.

  She stood defiant for a moment, but then she also began to undress. It was faster for her because she had two good hands. But she wore no undergarments, so once her boots and shirt and jeans were off, she was naked.

  There was nothing for her to do but stand there, facing Smith and the woman. She made no attempt to cover any part of herself. The woman looked her up and down with the same indifference, though her eyes did linger for a moment on Haley’s narrow strip of pubic hair.

  Finally, Cat was done, too, standing there in her bra and panties and nylon cast.

  Smith gathered their clothing and footwear off the floor, then stood. To Cat’s surprise, he maintained eye contact with Haley and herself, never once, as far as Cat could tell, glancing down.

  Smith said to Cat, “You come with us.”

  They left Haley alone, Smith locking the door behind them.

  It was an old door with old locks, Cat noted. The key was a long, wrought-iron skeleton key with an oval loop at one end.

  Cat was directed to the room across the hall. She entered it, expecting the door to be closed and locked behind her as well, but instead Smith and the dark-haired woman followed her in.

  They suddenly grabbed her, the woman holding one wrist, the one in the cast, and Smith holding the other as he pushed at the back of Cat’s head, bending her at the waist till she was facedown over the edge of the bed. She did what she could to resist, but they were too strong.

  She was still now, bent at the waist, her feet on the cold floor, her torso across the hard mattress. Her face was being held down by someone’s hand. She had to turn it sideways so she could breathe. They had positioned her across the mattress so her backside was facing the door.

  She’d never felt more vulnerable in her life.

  Her heart froze in her chest.

  “Okay,” she heard Smith call. “We have her.”

  A moment later there were footsteps coming up the stairs. Two pairs, so Fiermonte and the Russian.

  They reached the top, turned, and entered the room. The light came on.

  It wasn’t long before Cat sensed that someone was standing directly behind her.

  “Give him room,” Fiermonte said.

  Him? The Russian? Cat thought.

  Room for what? To fuck me?

  Some Russian code of payback?

  Cat listened for the sound of a belt being unbuckled or a zipper being opened. Instead, she heard what sounded like some kind of packaging being torn. Long seconds passed, and finally the Russian moved closer still. She closed her legs, tried to bring her knees together, but the Russian was already between them. She felt his own hard knees prying her legs farther apart as he moved in even closer.

  Someone grabbed her good arm, then pulled it from the dark-haired woman’s hand and twisted it so it was behind Cat’s back.

  She knew then what was going to happen.

  Knew it even before the sharp point of the syringe pierced her forearm and entered her vein.

  But she was helpless. All she could do was close her eyes tight as the Russian slid in the plunger.

  “It’s just a little ketamine, Cat,” Fiermo
nte said. His voice was soft, reassuring. “Just to help you relax till we need you.”

  The needle was pulled from her arm, and she felt the effects of the drug almost immediately.

  The next thing she knew she was being brought to her feet and held upright as someone pulled back the blankets. Then she was being placed on the bed and turned onto her side. Despite her condition she recognized Fiermonte’s touch, smelled his cologne. He lifted her legs, placed them under the blankets, and then covered her.

  As tenderly as a lover.

  They left one by one, shut the light off, and locked the door.

  She heard the sound of footsteps on creaking steps as Fiermonte and the others made their way downstairs.

  There were muffled voices for a few moments — Fiermonte and Smith conferring, then Fiermonte on the phone again.

  Cat couldn’t help but think of Jeremy as he was being held in that apartment in Chelsea, listening to voices as he passed in and out of consciousness.

  Her last murky thought to cross her mind before the drug took hold and she slipped into unconsciousness was the realization that she now, and Jeremy back then, were listening to the same disembodied voice.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Johnny and Dickey were standing face-to-face in that dimly lit dining room.

  “What Jeremy heard that night,” Dickey said, “was Tambov talking to Fiermonte, not me. Jeremy didn’t see me till the next night because Tambov didn’t call me till then.”

  “But Tambov got picked up.” Johnny said. “The cops got a tip and arrested him.”

  “And he said everything I told him to say. Fiermonte has told you a lot of shit, but that much was true.”

  “I don’t understand. You told Tambov to say those things about my father. That he was a traitor.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll get to that, Johnny.”

  Despite his confusion and his rapidly declining physical state, Johnny stood there, silent.

  A clear question emerged then from his inner chaos.

  “What else has Fiermonte lied about?”

  “The day after Jeremy spoke to Atkins, Atkins was approached by Fiermonte. He told Fiermonte everything. Why do you think Fiermonte was so willing to send Jeremy to Atkins in the first place? One would think he’d want to steer Jeremy away from a known drug dealer, right? But Fiermonte needed to know what was up, and sending Jeremy to Atkins, someone he could easily lean on, was a chance for him to find out.”

  “How do you know this? That Fiermonte approached Atkins?”

  “Atkins told me.”

  “When?”

  “Early this morning.”

  So that explains Atkins’s disappearance, Johnny thought. He hesitated, then asked if Atkins was still alive.

  “He’s fine. Scared, but he needed a good scaring, I think. We’ll release him once this is over.”

  “But how could Fiermonte convince Atkins to betray you like that? It’s pretty well-known what betraying Dickey McVicker gets you.”

  “There’s one thing that stands between Atkins and his inheritance. Fiermonte offered to remove that obstacle.”

  “He offered to have Atkins’s father killed,” Johnny said.

  Dickey nodded. “What was it Nietzsche said about staring into the abyss? Stare into it long enough and you become it. Or it becomes you. Something like that. Whatever the case, it seems that Donnie Fiermonte may have learned a trick or two from me.”

  Johnny only half-heard that. He was instead thinking now about certain other things Fiermonte had said.

  Potential lies.

  He almost didn’t want to ask — it was too much to hope for — but he had to know, one way or the other.

  “What about the thumbprint the cops found on the steering wheel? Was he lying about that, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the strand of Haley’s hair on the passenger seat?”

  “Also not true. All part of his bluff.”

  “But how did he even know she was in the passenger seat? How did he know I had grabbed the wheel?”

  “I’ll get to that, too, Johnny. But as you know, a good lie depends on the right balance of details — not too much, not too little. Donnie Fiermonte is an extraordinary liar.”

  “So there’s nothing connecting Haley and me to what happened there?”

  “Nothing. Except for Richter’s men, of course. The ones who survived, that is.”

  Johnny thought of the man he had killed.

  “He didn’t give me a choice,” he said.

  Dickey shrugged as if it were an insignificant matter. “Richter needs to pick his men more carefully. I’ve been telling him that for years. It was a good lesson for him.”

  “Can you count on the others to keep their mouths shut?”

  “Like you said, the price of betraying me is well known.”

  Johnny thought about asking if the man he had killed had a family, but instead turned his mind to the one question that remained.

  One more thing for which he dared to hope.

  “And what about the extradition request? Was Fiermonte lying about that, too?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Fiermonte’s not the only one with friends in the right places. It took some doing, but in the end, the request was refused. Insufficient evidence to proceed. Hers, too.”

  “You stopped it.”

  “I encouraged someone to make the right decision.”

  “But how did you even know?”

  “I knew you were hiding. Why else would you come to me and ask for off-the-books work? Why else would you live the way you were living? And I knew by the look in your eyes that whatever it was, it was something bad. I’d be a fool to offer you my protection without finding out exactly what it was I was protecting you from. Obviously you’re both still wanted in Thailand. The cops there might dig up a witness, or create one, for that matter, and then reapply, so I wouldn’t get too relaxed. But for now, here in the States, you’re both in the clear.”

  Johnny closed his eyes.

  For a brief second, all his pains were gone, washed away by the exhilarating waves of relief gushing through him.

  They were free.

  Free to live normal lives, if they chose.

  But then he remembered what had happened an hour ago.

  The man he had shot.

  The undercover cop.

  All joy vanished.

  Dickey, as if reading Johnny’s mind, said, “Smith isn’t dead. He was wearing a vest. So were the others. Oh, and his name isn’t Smith. And he isn’t a cop.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s FBI. One of the men your father trained, in fact.”

  “You knew?”

  Dickey nodded.

  It took Johnny a moment to make the connection.

  “Smith gave Fiermonte the details about the car crash,” he said.

  Dickey nodded again. “After I questioned Richter’s men, I told Smith to feed the details back to Fiermonte and see what happened.”

  “Smith is an FBI agent posing as an undercover cop, and he takes orders from you?”

  “You’d be amazed the partnerships that can arise when needs align. I’m sure you’re familiar with the old adage, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”

  “You both want Fiermonte.”

  “Of course we do. When Tambov’s men started turning up dead over a year ago, we thought Fiermonte was just getting rid of anyone who knew that he had turned Tambov against me. Even anyone who might know. The dead men had all been beaten before they were executed, but that could have been Fiermonte’s mutt Gregorian having his fun. Fiermonte’s recent activities, though, were an indication that he might possibly know something else.”

  “What?”

  “That things may not have gone exactly the way he thought they had the night your father was taken.”

  “I don’t understand.”
<
br />   “Fiermonte knew about the existence of your brother’s recordings and needed to know if they implicated him. Jeremy’s therapist was killed a week ago, and Fiermonte would have listened to the recordings as soon as possible. It’s likely Gregorian uploaded the audio files to an online site that Fiermonte could download them from. So Fiermonte would have known then that he was in the clear, that Jeremy didn’t mention him by name. Instead of backing off, though, he amped things up.”

  “Amped things up how?”

  “By pressing Jeremy’s buttons, to begin with. Then Cat’s, and finally yours.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Legally, the recordings are useless. But how they might sound to a murdered man’s children, that’s a different matter, now, isn’t it? I said it to you and Cat in the warehouse yesterday. The man who shot at Jeremy shot at him to drive him.”

  “To whom? Me? Cat?”

  “As part of the means to his end, yes.”

  It took Johnny a moment. “You? He wanted us to think it was you. He wanted one of us to kill you.”

  “That certainly would have been a bonus, yes. But what he really wanted was all three of you in danger. That’s why Gregorian was told to shoot at Jeremy but not kill him. And why Jeremy was taken, beaten, drugged, and then let go. It’s why Cat was attacked in Chappaqua, why Atkins lied to you, and why Fiermonte wanted you to think you and your girlfriend were in serious trouble. It’s also why Elizabeth Hall was murdered.”

  Johnny opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He was lost, hopelessly lost, just a moment now from collapsing.

  Dickey saw this and said, “Fiermonte wasn’t after the recordings; he already had the originals, knew they were harmless to him and useless against me. Everything he did, everything that happened from the moment Jeremy left your father’s apartment last night — from well before that, actually — was done to drive you kids out of your hiding places and into the open.”

  “But why?”

  “Remember, Johnny, Fiermonte didn’t just want your father killed. He wanted information, too. Information Tambov, and Tambov alone, was told to extract from your father before killing him.”

  Johnny was struggling. “What information?”

  “Whether or not your father was on to him.”

  “On to Fiermonte?”