“Maybe.” Mr. Roth was skeptical. “It doesn’t seem a little odd to you that such a man would be so obvious? Would a man, a professional at his job, be so sloppy? Look at what you say about the flag, that it was a hint or a challenge. It seems inconsistent, no, to be so subtle on one hand and obvious on the other?”
My first instinct was to argue with him, but I could see Izzy’s point. I didn’t know Joe Spivack all that well. He was, as Izzy had so aptly put it, a professional. Now that I stepped back and gave it some thought, it did seem a little odd that he had taken so little care to cover his own tracks. Only if he had contemplated suicide all along, which was possible, would his sloppiness have made sense. Then why all the secrecy? Why no suicide note? Why the flag? On the other hand, if he had meant not to get caught and hadn’t contemplated suicide, why hadn’t he traveled under an assumed name? Why hadn’t he driven or taken the train? There would have been no paper trail. But Barto had been specific about Spivack flying in.
“You make some sense, Mr. Roth.”
“We alter kockers occasionally do, you know. I’m goin’ to ask you a question and I don’t want you should get mad. Okay?”
“Go ahead.”
“You have with you your gun?” he asked sheepishly.
“No. I flew down, remember? I’m not licensed to carry on aircraft. Guns and aircraft don’t mix.”
“Wait here a second.”
He stood up and went into his bedroom. I used the time to consider what he had said about Spivack. Mr. Roth had definitely planted the seed of doubt and it had quickly taken root. Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t yet see what it was.
Israel Roth stepped back into the living room of his neatly kept condo. He held a rectangular plastic case in his right hand.
“Here, Mr. Moe.” He handed me the case. “I want you to take this for while you’re here. Then, before you go home, you can give it back.”
I opened the case. Inside was a little .25-caliber automatic in pristine condition. I took it out, clicked off the safety, and ejected the bullet that was in the chamber.
“You should never leave a loaded weapon around, Mr. Roth, especially ones with chambered rounds.”
“What, so I should tell the burglar to wait until I put the clip in and put a bullet in the chamber? I got no small children here, Moe, and I keep it well hidden. I’m not a reckless man.”
“I know, Mr. Roth. I didn’t mean to lecture. It’s just that guns are funny things. If you hesitate or are afraid to use them, they’ll get taken away from you and used on you.”
“I wouldn’t hesitate, believe me. In my clothing store on Flatbush Avenue I used to keep a big .38. More than once I had to stick it in somebody’s kishkes when they tried to stick me up.”
“But why do you need a gun down here?”
“I sell a little jewelry on the side, nothing too fancy. Everybody’s got some little side business in this place. The money is nice, but it’s not so much the money as it keeps you sharp, awake. Retired people don’t so much die as they let themselves fall asleep a bit at a time. They become passive and inactive and they forget they’re alive.”
“I understand.”
“So I keep the little pistol when I go to the bank or pick up inventory. That’s all. It makes me feel safer. There are people who prey on the old. I’ve been prey once in my life. Never again. Now it’ll make me feel safer if you keep it for a few days. All right?”
I didn’t hesitate. He’d sufficiently spooked me. Everything had been falling so neatly in line. Maybe too neatly. Mr. Roth had done me a tremendous favor, not necessarily by giving me the gun, but by calling attention to a blind spot.
We chatted for a little while longer. I was glad of it. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave with the pistol being the last business between us. It really was good to see him. My grandparents had been very old when I was a boy and my parents had both died relatively young, so I’d never formed much of a relationship with a man of Mr. Roth’s age. I found his calm demeanor and his perspective a great comfort. Although he didn’t talk about it much, I knew he was estranged from his son. I guess we both filled a niche in each other’s lives.
He went back into his bedroom to put away the gun case, then reemerged with three smaller jewelry boxes.
“I had meant to send these to you for Hanukkah, but I prefer to let you take them home with you. This one we’ll open here. It’s for you,” he said, a proud smile washing over his face as he raised up the lid of the blue velveteen box.
Inside was a Star of David. It was lovely, the points of the star formed by overlapping pieces of gold that were shaped like the number 7.
“When we were up in the Catskills, Mr. Moe, I noticed you didn’t wear one. I hope you don’t think it is presumptuous of me to—”
“Not at all. Will you help me put it on?”
We were quite a sight there, the two of us with our hands shaking, trying to get the clasp open.
“Thank you, Israel. I don’t know what to say.”
“The look on your face is thanks enough. There’s one there for Katy and for Sarah, too. I only hope they are as pleased as you look.”
“They will be. I better get going,” I said, tapping my watch.
We wished each other well. He promised to come visit in November during his biyearly pilgrimage to the Catskills. I told him Katy would never forgive him if he didn’t show.
“I promise. I promise!” he shouted as I retreated down the hall.
During the drive back to Miami, I couldn’t help touching the star. It had been so long since I’d worn one that it felt odd against my chest, even a little uncomfortable. A little discomfort was a good thing, I thought. It made you pay attention. On the other hand, I had almost forgotten about the pistol tucked in my jacket pocket. Strange, the things you get used to.
THE RED MESSAGE light on my motel-room phone was flashing madly when I reentered the dank world of peach and teal. The calls were all from Barto, each successive message more feverish than the last. Where was I? He’d found the middleman. It hadn’t been easy to arrange a meeting, but the meeting was set. It would be just me, the middleman, and Barto.
“You show up on your own. I’m gonna get there ahead of you just to make sure the coast is clear and that he ain’t fucking with us. I’m pretty sure this guy’s on the up-and-up. My sources tell me not to sweat it,” he said in his fifth and final message. “This guy’s a pro, a moneyman. He’s got no use for violence. Bad for business, he says. I’ll see you later.”
I WAS TEN minutes early. The Black Flamingo was an abandoned art deco hotel on the wrong end of Miami Beach. There was nothing unusual in that. The most prominent design features in this part of town seemed to be foreclosure signs. Apparently, the cocaine economy had yet to trickle down to this end of the beach. As seedy as it was, there was a kind of decadent charm to the area, an echo of great things that once were. And the ambient sound of the ocean only added to its down-at-the-heels allure.
There was a gap in the plywood at the back of the old hotel, as Barto had said there would be. In spite of the ex-marshal’s assurances about the remoteness of violence, I felt better for having Mr. Roth’s little .25 in my pocket. There was no getting around it. I’d carried a firearm strapped to some part of my body almost every day going on fifteen years. Although I’d never had occasion to fire a single shot in anger, I felt naked without a gun. Unfortunately, Mr. Roth’s .25 had about as much stopping power as a spitball.
I snapped on my flashlight and stepped through the hole at the back of the hotel into what had been the kitchen. I could see the flickering shadows of candlelight beneath the doors that led out of the kitchen into what I assumed was the dining room. I made my way ahead around the dusty stainless-steel kitchen fixtures. With a flashlight in one hand and my other hand nestled around the .25, I used my right shoulder to push through the double doors.
I used a little too much nervous energy and spilled sideways through the doors. Before
I could regain my balance, I stumbled over an old bundle of linens left carelessly in the middle of the floor. Except it wasn’t a bundle of linens at all. I think I knew that even before I hit the ground. The candle blew out.
“Fuck! Barto!” I scrambled to the body, clenching madly at the flashlight. In one panicked motion I flicked the flashlight back on and rolled the body onto its back. “Barto, are you all right?”
Only it wasn’t Barto, and he was as far away from all right as I was from Singapore.
“You’re a little early, Prager. I see you’ve met Gedalia Morenos.” Barto’s voice bounced off the tile floor and plaster walls in the darkness. “He was a big man in Little Havana. He had a special talent for getting dinero back to Cuba to help out the families left behind.”
“Like the Alfonsecas, for instance,” I said, trying to keep Barto talking.
“Oh yeah, just like them.”
“So it was you who arranged for Alfonseca to take the fall for Moira’s murder.”
“Too bad you figured that out so late in the game, Prager.”
It was no good. The source of his voice was impossible to locate. But as long as the place stayed dark, I would keep breathing. I pulled the .25 out of my pocket and undid the safety.
If I could buy a little more time to calm myself down, I might have one chance.
“So I was wrong about Spivack,” I called out, pressing my belly to the ground next to Morenos’s body.
“Not completely,” Barto answered in a lower voice that didn’t bounce around the room quite as much. “Using a guy like Alfonseca to take the fall was Joe’s idea, only he wouldn’t go through with it all the way. It was such a good idea, too good to let go to waste.”
“You had no such qualms. Two ex-wives to take care of, right?”
“No problems at all,” he answered. “The bitch was already dead.”
Good. If my guess was right, Morenos’s body was between me and Barto. My showing up early had prevented Barto from getting the body out of the way and lining up a clear shot.
“So you went through with it without Spivack. He didn’t know about it until it was too late. And by then, he had to play along or risk being exposed himself.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“If you kill me,” I shouted, “they’ll tie you to me through the checks I paid you with.”
“What checks? I got rid of those ten minutes after you gave ‘em to me. Anyway, why don’t you let me worry about that. Your troubles are all over.”
A blinding light flashed, there was a loud crack, and Morenos’s lifeless body jumped. It jumped again, again. I couldn’t afford to hesitate. I aimed the little .25 into the beam of light and emptied the clip, each shot aimed slightly higher or lower, further left or right than the last. Something clanged against the tile floor. Glass broke. The room went dark again. Barto moaned, but I didn’t hear him fall. I didn’t wait around to see how badly he was hurt. I picked up my flashlight and ran, banging through the kitchen doors, into the sharp corners of the kitchen fixtures and out into the night.
I scrambled to my rented car, fumbling for my keys as I went. I forced my hand to steady and turned the ignition. It caught immediately and I was off. It was all I could do not to floor the gas pedal, but I couldn’t risk getting pulled over, not with Irving Roth’s empty pistol in my lap. I could also feel blood begin seeping out of the cuts the kitchen fixtures had gifted me with as I ran for my life. When I was several blocks away and sure I heard no sirens, I pulled to the curb and disassembled the .25. I wiped the individual pieces clean with the sleeve of my jacket. I threw part of the automatic off a bridge as I crossed. I tossed another piece down a storm drain. I dumped the empty clip in a garbage can near the motel.
If Barto was in any kind of traveling shape at all, I didn’t figure to have much time before he showed up at my motel. But I had something to do even before I cleaned up and got out. I put in a call to Israel Roth.
“Mr. Moe”—his voice was happy and a little boozy—“it was a joy to see you today.”
“You too, Izzy. I hear in your voice that you’re still enjoying the vodka.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Listen, Mr. Roth, I need you to do something for me and I need you to not question me about it.”
“What’s wrong? Are you all right?” The airiness went right out of his voice. “Where are you?”
“I’m okay. I’m okay, but I need you to do this for me.”
“What?”
“Go to the local police station and report your gun missing. Don’t overdo it. Be apologetic. You’re an old man, they won’t be too rough on you. Tell them you had it with you this afternoon when you went to the store and when you checked for it, it was gone. Tell them something like that. Will you do that for me?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Izzy, please. I’m fine. Just do it. Do it now!”
“I’m doing it. I’m doing it.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll talk about it then. Just to let you know, you saved my life today. Thanks. Bye, Mr. Roth.”
I hung up. I knew it would be better for me to check out immediately and get out of town, or to another motel at least. But I couldn’t risk the desk clerk at this motel or the next seeing me in the disheveled state I was in. I tore off my clothes and took a fast shower, scrubbing my hands almost raw. Luckily, none of the cuts I’d accrued were either deep or on my face. None were readily visible. I packed in a hurry, careful to keep the clothes I had just removed in a separate pillowcase.
The desk clerk was too busy with hourly customers to pay me much mind. I paid my bill in cash and asked for directions to Cocoa Beach. I had no intentions of going there, I just remembered the name from I Dream of Jeannie. It’s weird what you think about. It was an obvious ploy, but anything I could do to put some space between Barto and me was worth a try. In any case, the desk clerk didn’t have a clue how to get to Cocoa Beach. He had just moved to Florida from Madras.
I drove all night, fueled by a sick kind of elation. I was alive. A man had actually tried to murder me and I was still alive. But was he? I’d done it, finally. I’d shot a man. Or had I? I guess I’d find out one way or another. I’d never bought into that crap about violence begetting violence. I believed it now. There was a direct line from Carl Stipe’s murder to Moira’s to Spivack’s suicide to what I’d done tonight. What I failed to recognize was that a chain of violence, unlike basketball, did not come with a twenty-four-second clock. It didn’t matter that Carl Stipe had died almost thirty years ago. Once he was killed, more violence was inevitable.
I dumped the pillowcase containing the clothes I’d worn during the exchange of gunfire in the rear end of a garbage truck parked at a rest stop outside Tampa. A little farther north, I turned in my rental car and took a bus up into Georgia. I flew from Savannah, Georgia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, and from there into La Guardia. I called Katy to tell her I was all right, but lied about where I was. I called Wit’s hotel room in L.A. He wasn’t in. I left a message for him to come home. The second I had hired Barto, our carefully thought out charade was over. I wished I hadn’t found out the hard way.
If, in my exhaustion, I had begun having second thoughts about the chain of violence, they vanished the moment I scanned the headlines at a newspaper stand outside the arrival gate.
The Post: IVAN THE TERMINAL
The News: IVAN TERRIBLE NO MORE
Newsday: RIKERS REVENGE
Anthony Murano, the brother of one of Ivan Alfonseca’s victims, had several weeks ago gotten himself purposely arrested. Yesterday, while both men were preparing to be bused to court, Murano attacked Alfonseca. Witnesses said it was all over in a flash, that Murano, a recently discharged army ranger, snapped Ivan’s neck like a twig. No one was shedding any tears. Lawyers from as far away as California were tripping over themselves volunteering to defend Murano. Did I think this was part of the master plan? No, not this. This was revenge, pure and sim
ple. If anything about revenge can be pure and simple. Whatever it was, pure or not, it had made my task nearly impossible.
I took a cab to a hotel across the Grand Central Parkway. Inside my room, I called my brother. There are times when only family will do, and this was one of them.
Chapter Twenty
AARON HAD DONE as I asked, made the phone calls, delivered the messages. He was an awfully efficient messenger. Everyone I had asked to call had called. Everyone I had asked to see had come. But I did not fool myself that it was all Aaron’s considerable salesmanship which had produced these remarkable results. It was as if the sense of inevitability which now dominated my waking hours had seeped into the lives of all the people connected to this case, from the perpetrators of the crimes to their accomplices to the people on the periphery. This case, which, in the end, was not about kidnapping or rape or even murder, but about a bicycle and a silly gang of wealthy boys who called themselves the James Deans. I clipped my old .38 to my belt, clicked off the room light, and checked the door handle behind me. Today, I had determined, the chain was to be broken. The violence that began twenty-six years and eleven months ago was going to come to an end.
YOU HAD TO admire Steven Brightman. He was out and ready for jogging early, the sun barely hinting at its arrival. Far enough away that he wouldn’t notice me, but close enough to see his face, I watched him stretch for five minutes on the steps of his brownstone. Although he could not have anticipated what was about to happen, he had to have some idea that the things he had so skillfully manipulated for so many years were about to spin wildly out of control. Yet his calm expression never changed. If he was frightened or worried, he didn’t show it. I could not make the same boast.
When he started down the block toward me, I was almost tempted to stay hidden and let him pass. I couldn’t. Like with Barto, I would probably get only one chance. In spite of his cool, collected demeanor, he wouldn’t be expecting this, not here, not now. I needed him off balance, but also feeling he had the upper hand. He struck me as the type of man who would always feel he had the upper hand. As he ran past, I stepped out from behind some brownstone steps.
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