by Harlan Coben
Bad news. “I can still come forward.”
“Yes, of course. And why, Mr. Bolitar, did you not call the police? Why, in fact, did you call your friend before the proper authorities? Are you or are you not suspected of aiding Ms. Esperanza Diaz in the murder of Billy Lee Palms’s oldest friend? What exactly were you doing in that bar in the first place? Why would Mr. Palms want to kill you?”
“It can all be explained.”
Win shrugged. “Your call.”
“Just as it was my call to go alone with Pat.”
“Yes.”
“Which I called wrong.”
“Yes. You were too vulnerable going in like that. There were other ways.”
“What other ways?”
“We could have grabbed Pat at another time and made him tell us.”
“Made him?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, rough him up? Or torture him?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Grow up,” Win said. “It is a simple cost-benefit analysis: By causing temporary discomfort to a malfeasant, you greatly lower the risk of being killed. It’s a no-brainer.” Win glanced at him. “By the way, you look like hell.”
“You should see the other guy,” he said. Then: “Did you kill Zorra?”
Win smiled. “You know me better than that.”
“No, Win, I don’t. Did you kill him?”
Win pulled up to the Biker Wannabee bar. He put the car in park. “Take a look inside.”
“Why are we back here?”
“Two reasons. One, you never left.”
“I didn’t?”
“That’s what I’ll swear to. You were here all night. You just walked Pat out for a moment. Thrill will back me on it.” He smiled. “So will Zorra.”
“You didn’t kill him?”
“Her. Zorra prefers to be called a her.”
“Her. You didn’t kill her?”
“Of course not.”
They got out of the car.
“I’m surprised,” Myron said.
“Why?”
“Usually when you threaten—”
“I never threatened Zorra. I threatened Pat. I said I may kill Zorra. But what would have been the point? Should Zorra suffer because a drugged-out psychotic like Billy Lee Palms hangs up a phone? Methinks not.”
Myron shook his head. “You’re a constant surprise.”
Win stopped. “And lately you’re a constant screwup. You got lucky. Zorra said she’d be willing to use her life to guarantee your safety. I recognized that she couldn’t do it. It’s why I told you not to go.”
“I didn’t think I had a choice.”
“Now you know better.”
“Maybe.”
Win put a stilling hand on Myron’s arm. “You’re not over her yet. Esperanza has a point when she tells you that.”
Myron nodded. Win dropped his arm.
“Take this,” Win said, handing him a small bottle. “Please.”
Trial-size mouthwash. Count on Win. They made their way inside the Biker Wannabee. Myron stopped in the bathroom, rinsed out his mouth, splashed water on his face, checked the wound. It hurt. He looked in the mirror. His face was still tan from his three weeks with Terese, but Win was right: He looked like hell.
He met up with Win outside the bathroom door. “You said two reasons before, that there were two reasons you wanted me to come back here.”
“Reason two,” Win said. “Nancy—or Thrill, if you prefer. She was worried about you. I thought it best if you saw her.”
When they reached the corner booth, Zorra and Thrill were busy chatting like, well, two single women at a bar.
Zorra smiled at Myron. “Zorra is sorry, dreamboat.”
“Not your fault,” Myron said.
“Zorra means that they’re dead,” Zorra said. “Zorra would have liked a few hours alone with them first.”
“Yeah,” Myron said. “Pity.”
“Zorra already told Win all Zorra knows, which is very little. Zorra is just a beautiful hired gun. She likes to know as little as possible.”
“But you worked for Pat?”
He-she nodded, but the wig did not. “Zorra was a bouncer and bodyguard. Do you believe that? Zorra Avrahaim having to settle for work as a common bouncer?”
“Yeah, times are tough. So what was Pat into?”
“A little of everything. Mostly drugs.”
“And how were Billy Lee and Pat connected?”
“Billy Lee claimed to be his uncle.” Zorra shrugged. “But that could have been a lie.”
“Did you ever meet Clu Haid?”
“No.”
“Do you know why Billy Lee was hiding?”
“He was terrified. He thought someone was trying to kill him.”
“That someone being me?”
“So it seemed.”
Myron couldn’t figure that one out. He asked a few more questions, but there was nothing else to learn. Win offered his hand. Zorra took it and stepped out of the booth. She handled the high heels well. Not everyone does.
Zorra kissed Win on the cheek. “Thanks for not killing Zorra, dreamboat.”
Win bowed slightly. “A pleasure, madame.” Win the charmer. “I’ll walk you out.”
Myron slid into the booth next to Thrill. Without saying a word, she grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him hard. He kissed her back. Win and his mouthwash. What a guy.
When they came up for air, Thrill said, “You do know how to show a girl a good time.”
“Ditto.”
“You also scared the hell out of me.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
She searched his face. “Are you okay?”
“I will be.”
“Part of me wants to invite you back to my place.”
He said nothing, lowering his eyes. She kept her eyes on his face.
“This is it, isn’t it?” she said. “You won’t call, will you?”
Myron said, “You’re beautiful, intelligent, fun—”
“And about to get the big kiss-off.”
“It’s not you.”
“Oh, that’s original. Don’t tell me. It’s you, right?”
He tried a smile. “You know me so well.”
“I’d like to.”
“I’m damaged goods, Nancy.”
“Who isn’t?”
“I’m just over a long-term relationship—”
“Who said anything about a relationship? We could just go out, right?”
“No.”
“What?”
“I don’t work that way,” he said. “I can’t help it. I go out with someone, I start picturing kids and a backyard barbecue and a rusted hoop in the driveway. I try to size up all that stuff right away.”
She looked at him. “Christ, you’re strange.”
Hard to argue.
She started fiddling with a mixing straw. “And you can’t imagine me in any of those domestic settings?”
“Just the opposite,” Myron said. “That’s the problem.”
“I see. At least I think I see.” She shifted in her seat. “I better go.”
“I’ll take you home.”
“No, I’ll get a taxi.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I think it is. Good night, Myron.”
She walked away. Myron stood. Win moved up next to him. They watched her disappear out the door.
“You’ll make sure she gets home safely?” Myron asked.
Win nodded. “I already called a car service for her.”
“Thanks.”
Silence. Then Win put his hand on Myron’s shoulder.
“May I make one observation at this juncture?” Win asked.
“Shoot.”
“You’re a total moron.”
They stopped at the doctor’s apartment on the Upper West Side. He restitched the wound, making a tsk-tsk noise as he sewed. When they reached Win’s apartment
at the Dakota building, the two friends settled into the Louis the Someteenth decor with their favorite beverages. Myron chugged on a Yoo-Hoo; Win sipped an amber liquor.
Win flipped channels with a remote control. He stopped on CNN. Myron looked at the screen and thought of Terese on that island by herself. He checked the time. This was normally Terese’s anchor slot. A bad dye job filled in. Myron wondered when or if Terese would be back on the air. And he wondered why he kept thinking about her.
Win turned the TV off. “Need a refill?”
Myron shook his head. “So what did Sawyer Wells tell you?”
“Not very much, I’m afraid. Clu was a drug addict. He tried to help him. Blah, blah, blah. Sawyer is leaving the Yankees, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“He credits them with raising him out of obscurity. But alas, now it’s time for dear Sawyer to take hold of his reins and motivate more minions. He’s going to start touring soon.”
“Like a rock star?”
Win nodded. “Complete with overpriced T-shirts.”
“Are they black?”
“I don’t know. But at the end of each performance he encores after frenzied fans flick their Bics and shout, ‘Freebird!’ ”
“That’s so 1977.”
“Isn’t it? But I did a little checking. Guess who’s sponsoring the tour.”
“Budweiser, the undisputed King of Beer?”
“Close,” Win said. “His new publisher. Riverton Press.”
“As in Vincent Riverton, former owner of the New York Yankees?”
“The very.”
Myron whistled, processed it, came up with nothing. “With all the buyouts in publishing, Riverton owns half the books in town. Probably means nothing.”
“Probably,” Win agreed. “If you have more questions, Sawyer is giving a seminar tomorrow at the Cagemore Auditorium at Reston University. He invited me to attend. I’m allowed to bring a date.”
“I don’t put out on the first date.”
“And you’re proud of that?”
Myron took a deep chug. Maybe he was getting older, but Yoo-Hoo didn’t have the same kick anymore. He craved a venti-size skim iced latte with a splash of vanilla, though he hated ordering it in front of other men. “I’m going to try to find out about Clu’s autopsy tomorrow.”
“Through this Sally Li?”
Myron nodded. “She’s been in court, but she’s supposed to be back at the morgue tomorrow morning.”
“Think she’ll tell you anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“You may have to turn on the charm again,” Win said. “Is this Sally Li of the heterosexual persuasion?”
“She is now,” Myron said. “But once I turn on the charm—”
“All bets are off, yes.”
“Charm so potent,” Myron said, “he can turn a woman against men.”
“You should print that on your business card.” Win did that snifter circle, palm up and under the glass. “Before our old chum Billy Lee perished, did he reveal anything of import?”
“Not really,” Myron said. “Just that he thought I was the one who killed Clu and now wanted to kill him.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm what?”
“Once again, your name rears its ugly head.”
“He was a strung-out addict.”
“I see,” Win said. “So he was just ranting?”
Silence.
“Somehow,” Myron said, “I keep ending up in the middle of this.”
“So it seems.”
“But I can’t imagine why.”
“Life’s little mysteries.”
“I also can’t figure out how Billy Lee fits into any of this: into Clu’s murder, into Esperanza’s affair with Bonnie, into Clu getting thrown off the team, into Clu signing with FJ, into any of it.”
Win put down his snifter and stood. “I suggest we sleep on it.”
Good advice. Myron crawled under the covers and plunged immediately into slumber land. It was several hours later—after the REM and alpha sleep cycles, when he started rising to consciousness and his brain activity started going haywire—that it came to him. He thought again about FJ and about his having tailed Myron. He thought about what FJ had said, about how he had even seen Myron at the cemetery before Myron disappeared with Terese in the Caribbean.
And a big click sounded in his head.
CHAPTER 27
He called FJ at nine in the morning. FJ’s secretary said that Mr. Ache could not be disturbed. Myron told her it was urgent. Sorry, Mr. Ache was out of the office. But, Myron reminded her, you just said he could not be disturbed. He cannot be disturbed, the secretary countered, because he is not in the office. Ah.
“Tell him I want to meet with him,” Myron said. “And it has to be today.”
“I can’t promise you—”
“Just tell him.”
He looked at his watch. He was meeting Dad at “the Club” at noon. It gave him time to try to rendezvous with Sally Li, chief medical examiner for Bergen County. He called her office and told her he wanted to talk.
“Not here,” Sally said. “You know the Fashion Center?”
“It’s one of the malls on Route Seventeen, right?”
“On the Ridgewood Avenue intersection, yeah. There’s a sub shop outside the Bed, Bath and Beyond. Meet me there in an hour.”
“Bed, Bath and Beyond is part of the Fashion Center?”
“Must have something to do with the Beyond part.”
She hung up. He got in the rental car and started out to Paramus, New Jersey. Motto: There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Commerce. The town of Paramus was like a muggy, jam-packed elevator with some jerk holding the door-open button and shouting, “Come on, we can squeeze in one more strip mall.”
Nothing about the Fashion Center was particularly fashionable; the mall was in fact so unhip that teenagers didn’t even hang out there. Sally Li sat on a bench, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. She wore green hospital scrubs and rubber sports sandals with no socks—footwear sported by many a coroner because it made cleaning off blood and guts and other human debris easy with a simple garden hose.
Okay, a little background here: For the past decade or so, Myron had been involved in an on-again, off-again romance with Jessica Culver. More recently they’d been in love. They’d moved in together. And now it was over. Or so he thought. He was not sure what exactly had happened. Objective observers might point to Brenda. She came along and changed a lot of things. But Myron was not sure.
So what’s that have to do with Sally Li?
Jessica’s father, Adam Culver, had been the Bergen County chief medical examiner until he was murdered several years ago. Sally Li, his assistant and close friend, had taken his place. That was how Myron knew her.
He approached. “Another no-smoking mall?”
“No one uses the word no anymore,” Sally said. “They say free instead. This isn’t a no-smoking mall; it’s a smoke-free zone. Next they’ll call underwater an air-free zone. Or the Senate a brain-free zone.”
“So why did you want to meet here?”
Sally sighed, sat up. “Because you want to know about Clu Haid’s autopsy, right?”
Myron hesitated, nodded.
“Well, my superiors—and I use that term knowing I don’t even have equals—would frown upon seeing us together. In fact, they’d probably try to fire my ass.”
“So why take the risk?” he asked.
“First off, I’m going to change jobs. I’m going back West, probably UCLA. Second, I’m cute, female, and what they now call Asian-American. It makes it harder to fire me. I might make a stink and the politically ambitious hate to look like they’re beating up a minority. Third, you’re a good guy. You figured out the truth when Adam was killed. I figure I owe you.” She took the cigarette out of her mouth, put it back in the package, took out another one, put it in her mouth. “So what do you want to know?”
“Ju
st like that?”
“Just like that.”
Myron said, “I thought I’d have to turn on my charm.”
“Only if you want to get me naked.” She waved a hand. “Ah, who am I kidding? Go ahead, Myron, fire away.”
“Injuries?” Myron asked.
“Four bullet wounds.”
“I thought there were three.”
“So did we at first. Two to the head, both at close range, either one of which would have been fatal. The cops thought there was only one. There was another in the right calf, and another in the back between the shoulder blades.”
“Longer range?”
“Yeah, I’d say at least five feet. Looked liked thirty-eights, but I don’t do ballistics.”
“You were at the scene, right?”
“Yup.”
“Could you tell if there was forced entry?”
“The cops said no.”
Myron sat back and nodded to himself. “Let me see if I got the DA’s theory right. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
“I look forward to it.”
“They figure Clu knew the killer. He let him or her in voluntarily, they talked or whatever, and something went wrong. The killer draws a gun, Clu runs, the killer fires two shots. One hits his calf, the other his back. Could you tell which came first?”
“Which what?”
“The calf shot or the back shot.”
“No,” Sally said.
“Okay, so Clu goes down. He’s hurt but not dead. The killer puts the gun to Clu’s head. Bang, bang.”
Sally arched an eyebrow. “I’m impressed.”
“Thanks.”
“As far as it goes.”
“Pardon?”
She sighed and shifted on the bench. “There are problems.”
“Such as?”
“The body was moved.”
Myron felt his pulse pick up. “Clu was killed someplace else?”
“No. But his body was moved. After he was killed.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The lividity wasn’t affected, so the blood didn’t have time to settle. But he was dragged around on the floor, probably immediately after death, though it could be up to an hour later. And the room was tossed.”
“The killer was searching for something,” Myron said. “Probably the two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Don’t know about that. But there were blood smears all over the place.”