‘But when Bartok called Spinner in, you knew he wasn’t going to leave you alone. Was it really necessary to torture Spinner like that?’
‘I. . I had to find out what he knew, and also who else he’d spoken to. He was just a junkie, Cal. A junkie and a fence and God knows what else.’
So that makes it okay, Doyle thinks. This whole project was executed according to some warped moral code that makes it all okay. Provided you draw a line in the sand and you don’t cross it, everything is hunky-dory.
‘So where does it end, Mo? What’s the final act in this big scheme of yours? Were you planning to keep me in isolation forever?’
‘No. I never really had an ending. I guess I thought I’d just let it fizzle out. The NYPD would keep looking until it ran out of steam and the brass called it a day. You’d slowly come out of hiding, start making contacts again. Gradually you’d reintegrate and everything would return to normal.’
‘Happy ever after, huh? What about me looking over my shoulder every minute in case this guy’s still around? What about me worrying about my family? What about people still refusing to come near me in case they get whacked? You really think that it would all just go away? You think it’s okay to let me live like that, never knowing whether each day is my last?’
‘I had no choice. I was never going to hurt you or your family, but I had to make you and everyone else believe I would. I’m sorry, Cal. Really. I know what you went through, but it would’ve been okay for you in the end. It just would’ve taken time.’
‘And now?’
Franklin looks puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You keep saying “would have”. If your plan would have worked. But it didn’t, Mo. It fell to pieces. So I’m asking you what I asked earlier. What happens now?’
Franklin lowers his gun slightly, but doesn’t take his eyes off Doyle.
‘I can’t undo it,’ he says regretfully. ‘I can’t stop it now. It has to play out.’
The unease creeps into Doyle’s bones. ‘Play out how?’
‘The same way it’s gone all along. Death following you around like it always does. You chose to come here tonight, Cal. You know what that means.’
It’s only as Franklin says these words that Doyle understands. And then it is too late. Too late to do anything except watch as Franklin pulls Doyle’s Glock from his waistband, turns it on Nadine and puts a bullet between her eyes.
Blood, skull fragments and brain matter explode onto the headrest behind her, and her arms fly apart, baring her upper body as she twitches in a macabre dance to her death.
‘NO!’ Doyle cries. He starts forward, but is stopped in his tracks by the sight of two gun barrels aimed straight at him. It’s the second time his own gun has been trained on him, and the second time he believes it to be his last.
‘Fuck!’ Doyle says. ‘She was your wife, for Chrissake! You didn’t have to do that.’
‘You’re wrong. I should have done it in the beginning. Instead of all that complicated shit, I should have just killed Nadine. I thought I could fix things, but I couldn’t. I should have kept it simple. I think she knew the truth anyhow. The way she acted after Joe and Tony died, I could tell she knew it was me. Of course, she couldn’t say anything without giving up what she’d done. When I started making it look like it was about you, she latched onto that. She really wanted to believe it had nothing to do with her own infidelity. We were both living a lie, Cal. It couldn’t have lasted.’
Doyle glances again at Nadine’s body. It’s motionless now. Blood trickles down from the hole in her head and into her part-open mouth. Her eyes are wide; they stare at Doyle as if to say, Look at what you’ve done. Doyle breathes like he’s just run a marathon; his heart seems to pound the blood through at the rate of a machine gun. He wants to move, to take some kind of action.
‘How the fuck are you going to explain this, Mo?’
Another shrug. ‘She was killed by your gun, Cal, not mine. There’ll be forensic traces that you were here — I’ll make sure of that. You came here, you killed her, you disappeared. Weird, I know, but then your behavior has been pretty erratic lately. I mean, the way you just happened to turn up at Spinner’s place and find the body. That was pretty coincidental, don’t you think? Then there was the meeting you had with known criminals — again, I’ll make sure we find confirmation of that. Maybe the hotel staff saw you leave with one of ’em? I don’t know — I’m sure we’ll find something. Oh, yeah, and then you go and check out of your hotel without even informing anyone. You just up sticks and leave. Pretty strange, all right. Why kill Nadine? Who knows. Maybe you were having a little thing with her. Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been suspected of cheating like that. Or maybe she found something out about you, along the lines of you engineering this whole anti-Doyle scheme yourself. We’ll see what the NYPD manages to come up with.’
‘With you directing the investigation, naturally.’
‘Naturally.’
‘For a last-minute change of plan, that’s pretty good.’
‘Thank you. I think better under pressure.’
‘Only, I didn’t like the bit about me disappearing after I’ve been here. Can we change that?’
‘Sorry, Cal. That stays.’
Doyle nods. ‘I thought it might.’
Franklin nods too, then stands there for a while. He tucks Doyle’s Glock back into his waistband, then gestures with the other gun.
‘Let’s get this over with.’
THIRTY-ONE
Franklin leads Doyle through a large kitchen to the rear door of the house. He unlocks it and motions Doyle out into the backyard. He picks up a spade resting against the wall of the house and tosses it to Doyle. Then he grabs a flashlight resting on the windowsill and aims it away from the house without turning it on.
‘Walk,’ he says. ‘That way.’
Doyle looks down to the bottom of the yard. The moon overhead is almost full; it bathes the scene in an eerie gray light. He begins to walk, his feet crunching on the coarse white gravel path. Halfway down, he hefts the spade in his hands, debating whether he can swing around fast enough to smash it into the face of the man behind him.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Franklin says, and Doyle stops doing so.
They reach a fence separating the yard from the woods beyond. Franklin tells him to unlatch the gate, then switches on the flashlight and shines it into the trees.
‘Through there.’
The way he’s indicating is straight into the thick of the woods, away from any well-defined path.
Doyle pushes on. Without a flashlight of his own it’s slow going. He frequently trips on gnarled roots or gets poked in the eye by a branch. At every step, small forest-dwellers in the blackness ahead of him scurry for cover.
After ten minutes of fighting nature, he halts and turns toward Franklin, who responds by shining blinding white light into his eyes.
‘You don’t think we should be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs or something?’
‘Not much farther, Cal. Straight ahead.’
Doyle continues his struggle for another few minutes as the ground begins to slope downward toward the banks of the reservoir. Then, after unsnagging his pants from a particularly stubborn tree, he stumbles into a small clearing. Following behind, Franklin switches off the flashlight and allows the moonlight to take over the illumination of this stage upon which Doyle figures he is to play out his final moments.
Franklin circles the arena, then hops onto a large rock and sits himself down. It’s clear from his sure-footedness that he’s been here before.
‘I come here alone sometimes,’ Franklin says. ‘Just to think, to get away from the world. I’m sure there’s hardly another soul even knows it’s here.’
Doyle sniffs against the cold. His nose feels like it’s on fire. ‘I’m honored you feel you can let me in on it. Why don’t you do some more of that being-alone business while I head back to somewhere a little warmer?’
/>
‘A little exercise will soon warm you up. Start digging, Cal.’
Doyle looks down at the ground. With the tip of the spade he scrapes a hole in the carpet of dead leaves, then taps the hard soil beneath.
‘This ground’s frozen, Mo, and I’m not in the best of shape right now.’
‘I’ll do it myself if I have to, Cal. But only after I’ve put a bullet in you.’
‘Never mind. I’ve just remembered how much I like digging.’
He puts his foot on the edge of the spade’s head and transfers his weight onto it. He’s surprised at how easily the blade sinks into the soil once it breaks through the top crust.
Which means that this isn’t going to drag on as long as I hoped, he thinks. Great.
He throws out a few mounds of earth, wincing against the pain in his side with each swing.
Franklin says, ‘Hurry it up, Cal. I’ll be arriving home soon, crying out at the sight of my poor murdered wife.’ He pauses for a second. ‘Or maybe I had too much work to do and decided to stay in my Manhattan apartment. Hmm, I’ll have to think that one over.’
Doyle continues to dig. Sweat trickles from his brow, and now his whole ribcage seems to be throbbing with the pain.
He pauses for breath, one hand resting on the end of the spade, the other pressed to his side.
‘What’s the matter, Cal? Young guy like you shouldn’t have any trouble doing this.’
Doyle doesn’t answer. He sniffs again, smells the resin from the trees surrounding him. He looks hard at those trees. Looks for a way out of this. Looks for some hope. Finally, he puts his hands down and faces Franklin. The upright spade topples and falls to the ground.
‘What are you doing, Cal? That’s not nearly deep enough.’
‘It’s over, Mo.’
Franklin raises his gun and points it at Doyle. ‘It’s over when I say it is. Now keep digging or I’ll shoot you. Makes no difference to me whether I kill you now or when you’re done. Just thought you’d appreciate a few more minutes to make your peace with the Lord. You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?’
‘Lapsed. I got the feeling He wasn’t listening to me. Somebody else has been, though.’
Franklin says nothing for a few seconds. Doyle senses the alarm creeping into the man’s bony frame.
‘What? What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘Back at the house. I wasn’t the only one listening in to that microphone strapped to Nadine. You may have got my recorder and my tape, but the wire was still running, Mo. Still pumping it out to another machine. All that stuff you said after you brought me into the house. It’s all been recorded. You’re finished, Mo.’
Franklin stands up on the rock. His gun is still aimed at Doyle, but his eyes scan the woods nervously.
‘Don’t try to mind-fuck me, Cal. As an attempt to save your ass, it’s pretty pathetic. You’re the loneliest man on the planet. You dropped off the face of the earth, and even if you hadn’t, there isn’t another cop who’ll knowingly come within a mile of you.’
‘Who said anything about cops?’ Doyle asks.
The crack of the gunshot sounds like a huge branch snapping off one of the trees. Doyle’s whole body jumps.
But he’s not the one who’s been shot.
Franklin’s gun hand jerks to his left, the Glock flying from it and clattering onto the rocks. The woods are suddenly alive with the sounds of animals and birds scampering and flapping in panic. Franklin clutches his arm, looks down at it in disbelief and agony.
Then, from behind Franklin, another figure appears and steps up onto the rock. He walks casually, a sniper rifle with telescopic night sights in his hands. Franklin whirls on the intruder.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asks.
The man’s response is to slam the butt of his rifle into Franklin’s face. Franklin spins away and drops heavily from the rock. Without hurry, and seemingly without emotion, the man follows Franklin down and aims his rifle at him.
Another man comes into view from around the rock. He’s not holding a gun, but Doyle knows that he is definitely the most dangerous man here.
He steps over to where Franklin is lying on the ground.
‘Stand up.’
Franklin staggers to his feet.
The man says, ‘You know who I am?’
Franklin rubs his injured face. ‘You’re Lucas Bartok.’
Bartok nods. ‘And you’re the man who had my brother killed.’
Franklin hesitates. He knows it’s the end, Doyle thinks. He hopes his boss will choose to go out like a man.
‘Your brother was a stinking piece of shit,’ Franklin says. ‘And you’re a stinking piece of shit who can’t even see straight ’cause he jerks off too much. Get it over with, Squinty.’
Like a man, then, Doyle thinks.
Bartok doesn’t argue and doesn’t wait for a second invitation. His arm shoots out into Franklin’s face, and for a brief moment Doyle wonders why he leaves it there.
And then he remembers something about Bartok.
He remembers that he likes to use a meat hook.
And right now that hook is embedded in Franklin’s left cheek like he’s a fish.
With a roar of anger, Bartok yanks Franklin toward him, spins him right around, and then flings him toward the rock. As Franklin goes one way, Bartok wrenches the hook in the other direction. Franklin’s cheek explodes as he hurtles back against the rock.
Doyle takes a step forward, but Bartok’s henchman raises his rifle, smiles, and shakes his head.
Bartok advances on Franklin, and again his arm whips out. This time the tip of the hook sinks into Franklin’s eye.
Franklin’s high-pitched scream scythes through the night air. He claws frantically at the metal thing protruding from his skull as Bartok drags him away. They disappear behind the rock, and even though they are now out of his sight, Doyle finds that he has to fix his eyes on the ground. He has to stare into the hole he has been digging and concentrate on that blackness to shut out the images. He tells himself that the noises he hears are wild animals fighting and calling to one another. It’s nature, that’s all. Just the animals. They sound like that sometimes. Almost human.
When it ends, Doyle feels faint with relief. The clearing is so chillingly silent he wonders if his fervent desire to cut out the screams has made him go deaf.
Bartok reappears looking like something from a zombie movie. In the moonlight, the blood that covers him from head to toe looks black. He walks toward Doyle, panting with the effort of his labors.
‘Talk about cutting it fine,’ Doyle says.
Bartok’s arm lashes out again. Doyle starts to dodge, but isn’t quick enough to avoid the cold steel connecting with his face. He drops to the ground, rolls to get away from Bartok’s onslaught. But when he looks up at Bartok, he sees that the man is no longer carrying his meat hook. What he struck with was Doyle’s own Glock.
Doyle touches his cheek. He feels warm blood there, but nothing as bad as he expected.
‘That’s for when you arrested me and my brother,’ Bartok says.
Doyle can sense he’s not done, though. When Bartok’s foot comes up, Doyle is ready to block it, grab it and push upward and back, knocking Bartok off balance.
But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t because that would mean his death. It would mean a salvo of bullets piercing his body within a split-second of any reaction against Bartok.
And so he takes the lesson, lets Bartok get it out of his system. Allows Bartok’s shoe to collide with his face, splitting open his lip.
‘And that’s for being a wise-ass.’
Doyle gets to his knees, tastes the blood gushing into his mouth. He spits it out onto the ground.
‘You done?’ he asks. ‘We finally quits now?’
‘Put your hands behind your back.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me, you dumb Irish fuck. Put your hands behind your back.’
Doyle looks at
Bartok. Wonders why it is that the end of one predicament always seems to lead straight into another.
When Doyle has clasped his hands behind him, Bartok signals his goon to approach. The man slings his rifle over his shoulder, then pulls a length of cord from his pocket and begins to tie Doyle’s wrists together.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Doyle asks.
‘Shut up,’ says Bartok. He snaps his fingers at the other man, who tosses him something soft and dark. Bartok moves behind Doyle, slips the cloth bag over his head.
Oh, Jesus, Doyle thinks. Not like this. Not after all I’ve been through.
He feels something hard press into the back of his skull.
‘You know what this is?’ Bartok says, his voice muffled through the cloth.
‘A gun.’
‘Yeah, a gun. Your fucking gun.’
My gun. Aimed at me again. This is starting to get repetitive.
‘We made a deal, Bartok.’
Ah, yes. The deal. Me getting my life back in return for handing Bartok the killer of his brother. Lucas sure got a shock tonight when I turned up at his door offering that one. Now where did I get the idea he could ever be a man of his word?
‘You think I’m stupid, don’t you, Doyle? Think I don’t know shit. To you, Kurt was the brains and I was just the dumb sidekick. Ain’t that right, Doyle?’
‘No, actually your dastardly ruse never fooled me for a minute. I always suspected you were the criminal mastermind and Kurt was just your puppet.’
For his impudence, Doyle receives another smack in the mouth, rattling his teeth.
‘Oh, you are so pushing it, Doyle. You are so asking to die here.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Doyle asks, finding it harder to speak now. ‘You’re gonna kill me anyhow.’
The laugh from Bartok seems to fill the clearing. Doyle can picture the forest denizens deciding they want nothing to do with whatever insane creature is issuing that fearful noise.
When Bartok speaks next, his voice is just an inch from Doyle’s ear. Doyle can feel the man’s warm breath pushing through the cloth.
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