by Harry Dolan
Loogan had parked under a burned-out streetlight. The car idled in the dark.
Laura was silent for a time and then said, “Tom wanted to be a writer.”
“I know,” said Loogan. “He told me once.”
“He thought he wasn’t good enough.”
“He told me that too.”
“I think that’s wrong,” Laura said. “I think things could have gone differently. But he sank too much energy into Gray Streets. I don’t think he meant to. That wasn’t the plan, when we were younger. We both wanted to be writers, but both of us went off track, somewhere.”
She reached for the hem of her coat, caught herself, and folded her arms across her middle. “Plans go wrong,” she said. “That’s something Tom used to say. I remember when we were starting out, when the magazine was first beginning to catch on. A reporter came to interview us. I think he was expecting a typical literary journal, but we were publishing mysteries and crime stories. What was the theme? he wanted to know. If we had to describe a Gray Streets story in one sentence, what would it be? Tom had an b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n
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answer ready, almost as if he had expected the question: ‘Plans go wrong, bad things happen, people die.’ ”
A car passed on the street, tires hissing like static on the pavement. Laura had paused and Loogan was watching her in profile. Her lips pressed tight together, her chin came up. She was a woman trying not to cry.
“Tom had a plan for Sean’s manuscript,” she said quietly. “He worked on it for a long time, and he wanted it published. The plan didn’t go the way he expected, but that wasn’t his fault. A bad thing happened to Sean Wrentmore, but when it was done, it was done. There was no reversing it. Whether Tom told the police or not, it couldn’t make any difference to Sean. But if Tom told the police, he would have to tell them the whole story.”
Head bowed, her hair obscured her face. “I don’t know what the legal consequences would have been, or what the newspapers would have made of it,” she said. “But I know that Tom wanted the manuscript published—
his version of the manuscript. And if he had gone to the police, that would never have happened. Sean wasn’t close to his family. I don’t think he shared his writing with them. But they would have had to agree, if the book was going to be published. And why would they agree, once they found out how much Sean hated what had been done to his manuscript?
“So Tom didn’t go to the police. I don’t know if he thought about what it would mean to Sean’s family. They would never know what had happened to Sean. As for the manuscript, a handful of people may have read Sean’s version, but memories fade. And the edited version was very different. I think Tom would have waited a few years and then published it under his own name, or under a pseudonym.”
She brought her palms up to rub the weariness from her eyes. Loogan focused on the delicate lines of her fi ngers as they passed down along her cheek. “But plans go wrong,” she said. “Bad things happen. Tom died, and then it was up to me to decide what to do. Maybe I should have told the police about Sean, maybe I should tell them now. But none of that can make a bit of difference to Tom.
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“Tom wanted to be a writer,” she said. “The closest he came to what he wanted was when he edited Sean Wrentmore’s novel. I’ve got the manuscript. I’m going to keep it in a trunk in the attic, and in a few years I’m going to discover it—a forgotten work by Tom Kristoll. And one way or another, I’m going to get it published, because that’s what he wanted.”
Chapter 22
It was nearly eleven-thirty when Loogan drove Laura Kristoll home. He stopped for gas along the way and made his call to Michael Beccanti. Cloak-and-dagger. When they reached the house, Laura invited him in for a drink. She embraced him before he left, and held on to him for a long time. She didn’t ask him to stay.
He was back on his street, at his rented house, at around quarter to one. He got out and locked the car. The driver’s door gleamed in the streetlight. The graffiti that Adrian Tully had scratched there had been smoothed away and painted over.
He looked up at the porch and there was the X that Beccanti had cut in his window screen. He would have to attend to that.
Inside, he left his coat on a kitchen chair. He ran the tap until the water was cold and drank two glasses. He kicked off his shoes at the foot of the stairs. Got his cell phone out of his pocket: no messages. He could call Beccanti now, he knew the man would be awake, but he didn’t feel up to a conversation. Tomorrow would be soon enough. He went upstairs and brushed his teeth. His eyes in the mirror looked weary. He set the alarm on his night table for nine in the morning, hung up his shirt, folded his pants on the dresser, and crawled into bed. When he woke, it was from a dream. He and Tom Kristoll were in the woods of Marshall Park. A flashlight tied to a branch shone down into Sean Wrentmore’s grave. Tom had cast aside the shovel and from somewhere had produced a thick sheaf of pages. He pressed them on Loogan. Tell me this isn’t brilliant, he said. The title page was streaked with dirt 1
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from Tom’s hands. Loogan tried to brush the dirt away and only made it worse.
Suddenly a ragged hole, the size of a dime, appeared in the page. A circle with black edges. Loogan, bewildered, brought the manuscript closer to his face. The hole went straight through; it pierced every page of the manuscript. Through it, Loogan could see the figure of Sean Wrentmore standing in his grave, smoke rising from the barrel of his nickel-plated gun. Only then did Loogan hear the shot. It startled him awake and he sat up sharply in his bed. He heard his alarm go off, but it was dark outside the window. The clock read 2:09. Then Loogan realized it wasn’t the alarm. His cell phone was ringing; he had left it on the night table. He answered it and heard Michael Beccanti’s voice. “David, it’s me. Don’t panic.”
He propped a pillow at his back and leaned against the headboard. “I’m not panicking.”
“Were you asleep?” Beccanti said. “I keep forgetting how you sleep.”
“I’m awake now.”
“Good, because I got in through the window again and I’m coming up the stairs. I’m going to switch on the hall light. Don’t let it startle you.”
The light came on. Beccanti appeared in the doorway, folding his cell phone and slipping it into his pocket. He wore blue jeans, a loose black dress shirt with the tails out, a heavy black blazer over all.
“Hello, David,” he said cheerfully.
Loogan closed his phone and turned on the lamp on his night table. He had a T-shirt on, and his boxers, and the blanket pulled up to his waist. He stayed where he was, determined to be unfazed by Beccanti’s sudden appearance.
“Pull up a chair,” he said. “Where have you been?”
There was a straight-back chair by the dresser. Beccanti brought it over to the bed, spun it around, and sat with his arms resting on the back.
“I’m sorry to come so late,” he said. “I lost track of time. I’ve been reading.”
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He brought a CD out of a pocket of his blazer and held it up for Loogan to see. It gleamed gold in the lamplight.
“What is it?” Loogan asked.
“It’s what I’ve been reading. I found it in the closet in Tom and Laura’s bedroom. There’s a space in the wall, behind a clever little panel. There was fi ve hundred in cash in there, and this. Well, not this exactly. This is a copy. I burned it on the computer in Tom’s study. I wonder if you can guess what’s on it.”
Loogan reached to take the disc. It was unlabeled. He spun it on the end of his finger.
He said, “It’s Sean Wrentmore’s manuscript. Liars, Thieves, and Inno- cent Men. ”
Beccanti grinned. “That’s a good guess, but not quite right.”
Loogan tapped the edge of the d
isc against his forehead. “I should have been more specific,” he said. “It’s an edited version of Wrentmore’s manuscript, pared down to something like a hundred thousand words.”
Beccanti’s grin faded, but he recovered quickly. “How did you know that? You’ve been holding out on me, David.”
Loogan handed the disc back to him. “I just found out about it tonight.”
Briefl y he passed along Laura’s account of Tom’s work on the manuscript and Sean Wrentmore’s death. Beccanti listened silently, his arms resting on the chair-back, his chin resting on his arms.
“Where does that leave us?” he said when Loogan finished.
“I think we’re done,” Loogan said. “I think we’ve learned everything we’re going to learn.”
“We still don’t know who killed Tom.”
Loogan studied the shadows on the ceiling. “I think Tully may have killed Tom.”
“Yeah?”
“I think Tom planned to go to the police,” said Loogan. “It didn’t sit well with him—covering up Wrentmore’s death. He wanted to tell the truth. I think Tully disagreed and they argued and Tom wound up dead.”
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“And then what? Tully shot himself ? You weren’t ready to believe that before.”
“It could have happened that way.”
“We’re supposed to believe that Tully didn’t mind killing Wrentmore, but killing Tom pushed him over the edge?”
“Why not?”
Beccanti trailed his thumb across his chin. “That would be nice. We wouldn’t have to look for Tom’s killer anymore. Tully’s the killer and Tully’s conveniently dead. It makes for a tidy story. I could almost believe it. But the CD isn’t the only thing I found in Tom and Laura’s house.”
He reached again into the pocket of his blazer and drew out a white envelope. “The desk in Tom’s study had a drawer with a false bottom,” he said, “just like the one in his office at Gray Streets. I found this inside.”
He tossed the envelope on the bed. Tom’s address was on the front, no return address. The top edge had been sliced open. Loogan took out the letter, a single printed page. Dear Mr. Kristoll, it began. I know about Sean Wrentmore.
There were a few more lines. A demand for fifty thousand dollars in cash, instructions on how to package it and where to send it—to “M. L. Black” at an address in Chicago.
“M. L. Black,” Loogan said aloud.
“I know,” Beccanti said. “It’s cute. I imagine there’s no one named Black at that address. It’s probably a storefront, one of those mailbox rental places.”
Loogan turned the page over, as if there might be something more. He looked at the envelope. It bore a Chicago postmark, dated a week after Sean Wrentmore’s death.
“Let me ask you this,” Beccanti was saying. “Do you think Laura’s telling you everything she knows?”
Loogan waved the letter impatiently. “Let me think for a minute. I’m trying to figure out what this means.”
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means we’re not done. We haven’t learned everything we’re going to learn. We need to plan our next move.”
He got up from the chair and held out a hand for the letter and the envelope.
“Why don’t you get dressed?” he said. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
The man who called himself David Loogan was frequently on the edge of breaking, but he had learned to cover it well. He didn’t like going out at night, but he had gone out to buy a shovel when Tom Kristoll asked him to. He didn’t like high places, or parking garages, but he had gone with Laura Kristoll to the top level of a parking garage to talk with her about Tom. He didn’t like open doors, because they made him feel vulnerable, but he didn’t like closed doors, because you never knew what might be behind them. He left the door to the bathroom half-open when he went in to wash his face after Michael Beccanti had gone downstairs. He didn’t like bending over the sink to splash water on his face, because it made him feel out of control. He had visions of being struck on the back of the head, his face slamming into the faucet, blood streaming from his nose. Nevertheless, he looked in the mirror—he was dressed now in the same shirt and pants he had worn earlier—and told himself he was being ridiculous, and he ran the water and felt the cool of it on his face. He endured the sound of it running, even though the sound of running water can drown out other sounds—can cover the approach of an attacker, for instance. Still, he washed, and no one attacked him, though for a second he thought he heard something other than the sound of the water. He thought he heard someone cry out.
He turned off the faucet and reached for a towel and the cry was not repeated. He took the towel into the hall with him, walking slowly, drying his hands and listening, and when he got to the top of the stairs he called Beccanti’s name. There was no answer.
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Descending the stairs, he had the towel with him still. It was cool at the bottom of the stairs. The living-room window, the one that looked out on the porch, was open wide. The curtains fluttered. No lights on in the living room, only the diffuse light that came down from the hallway above. In the dim, he could see Beccanti sitting on the sofa. He spoke the man’s name again; he could hear him breathing.
Outside on the street, a car engine started. The car drove away. Loogan turned the switch of the floor lamp. He saw the blood first on the carpet: splotches of it where Beccanti had fallen. He must have dragged himself, pulled himself up onto the sofa. The blood on his shirt was harder to detect; it was a wet sheen on the black fabric. Beccanti’s right hand was pressed against his stomach, slick crimson between the fingers. The knife lay beside him on the sofa. Loogan recognized the long blade; it was a knife from the kitchen.
He saw the wound on Beccanti’s throat last: a dark line and the blood ran under the collar of his shirt. Loogan had the towel; he rushed forward and pressed it to Beccanti’s throat—too hard and Beccanti gasped. He eased the pressure.
The phone was across the room. With his free hand, Loogan dug Beccanti’s cell phone from his pocket, dialed 911, and got a dispatcher.
“I need an ambulance,” he said. “My father’s having a heart attack.” The lie came to him easily. His voice held the appropriate note of urgency.
“Please give me your name and location, sir.”
“David Loogan,” he said, and gave her the address.
She asked him to hold on and he didn’t know what to expect—maybe music while he waited—but there was only silence and she was back on the line a moment later.
“EMTs are on their way, sir. Is your father alert?”
“I don’t think he’s going to be for long. Ask them to hurry, will you?”
She began to say something more and he closed the phone. Beccanti’s brow, under his dark, tangled hair, was damp and pale. His eyes were unfocused. His mouth worked but it made no words. b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n
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“It’s not bad,” Loogan said to him. Idiotic. “Sometimes it’s not as bad as it looks.”
Beccanti’s eyes squeezed shut and Loogan swore under his breath, but after a few seconds Beccanti’s eyes fluttered open again. Blood was coming through the towel. Loogan doubled it over. He was bending over Beccanti, one knee on the sofa cushion. He could see the stomach wound, blood trickling over the back of Beccanti’s fingers. The stomach wound might be the worst of it, he thought.
He swore again and tucked the ends of the towel behind Beccanti’s shoulders. “Back in a second,” he said.
His shoes were at the bottom of the stairs. He stepped into them and dashed into the kitchen, turned on the overhead light, the porch light, unbolted the front door and threw it open wide. He grabbed dish towels from a drawer, grabbed
his coat, back in the living room, tossed the coat halfway up the stairs. At the sofa again, bowing over Beccanti, he peeled the man’s hand away from his stomach, gingerly, and pressed dish towels to the wound. He unclasped Beccanti’s belt, tugged it free, threaded it behind the man’s back—this brought a gasp—and fastened it tight over the towels.
Light pressure on the neck, pressure on the stomach, Loogan kept watch over Michael Beccanti. Beccanti’s eyes had closed, his breathing was shallow as a sleeping child’s. The flashing lights showed up on the wall behind the sofa. Loogan hadn’t measured the time, but it hadn’t been long. He looked over his shoulder and saw the ambulance through the front window. Lights, no sirens. No police yet, no patrol car. He didn’t think they would send a car for a heart attack.
Doors slamming outside. Voices. Loogan said good-bye to Michael Beccanti. Laid his palm on the tangle of dark hair. He took his coat, careful to grasp it by the inner lining, and vanished up the stairs. He hit the switch of the hallway light.
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Blood on his shirt, and on the knee of his pants. The pants weren’t bad. Into his bedroom. He got a fresh shirt.
Voices from below, a man’s and a woman’s. They had found their way to Beccanti. Loogan listened in as he stuffed clothes into a duffel bag from the closet.
A bit of gallows humor first. “That’s no heart attack,” the man said. The woman called for a patrol car, on what must have been a handheld radio. She got a reply; a unit was on its way.
“Can you hear me, sir? What’s your name?”
“I don’t think he can hear you,” the woman said.
They got down to work, talking quietly to each other. From the bedroom Loogan heard snatches.
“Pulse is weak.”
“Got an airway, but I don’t like it much.”
They remarked on Loogan’s work with the towels and the belt.
“Who do you suppose did this?”
“And are they still here?”
“Not sure I want to find out.”
Quiet, and then one of them must have run out to the ambulance. Loogan heard the clatter of a gurney rolling in over the kitchen floor, subdued when it hit the carpet of the living room.