Empty ever after mp-5

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Stop!” a voice came out of the darkness.

  “Ralphy Barto.”

  “You remember?”

  “I remember. Hitting you in the eye like that, it was a lucky shot.”

  “Not for me.”

  “As I recall, you were trying to kill me at the time.”

  “There was that,” he said, a smile in his voice. “You carrying?”

  “I got my. 38 tucked into the small of my back. You want me to-”

  “No, thanks,” he said, stepping out of the darkness. “I’ll handle it.”

  He was carrying a submachine gun of some kind, a long, thick sound suppressor on the end of its barrel. In spite of the eye patch and years, Barto actually looked better than he had in 1983 and I told him as much.

  “Yeah, I take care of myself these days. Anyone in the car?”

  “Brightman told me to come alone.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Before I could say anything else, Barto sprayed my car with bullets. The rate of fire was amazing, the suppressor-silencer is a misnomer-keeping each shot down to a loud snap and hiss. He paid careful attention to the trunk and backseat.

  “No,” I said too late. “I’m alone.”

  “That you are, my friend.” He replaced the clip, took my. 38, and patted me down. He knew I wouldn’t risk Katy’s life by trying anything. “Christ, you smell like puke. You’re scared, huh? Somehow, I didn’t figure you as a puker.”

  “Bad shrimp.”

  “Cute,” he said. “Listen, he’s gonna kill her one way or the other. There’s nothing I can do about that, but if you wanna run, I won’t shoot you. I’ll lay this thing down and you can split.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I know, but I figured I’d ask. Come on. Up the hill. You try anything now, I’ll wound you and it won’t change anything.”

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “She’s a little freaked, I guess.”

  “Has he hurt her?”

  “Not really.”

  It was a tough climb up the hill. We stopped at the top to rest a minute before heading toward where the guest parking lot had been. The parking field was gone as were the wildly overgrown hedges that had once marked the rear boundary of the lot, but the concrete steps that led down to where the pool area and ball courts used to be still remained. The same could not be said for the pool and courts themselves. Now nothing but a great flat field with hills in the distance appeared in the beam of my flashlight. We started across the field.

  About fifty yards on was where the late Anton Harder had established his angry white boys town: a collection of ratty trailers, abandoned cars, and abandoned souls. The people who lived there were a ragtag collection of losers, misfits, and bigots. Harder had his own reasons for choosing the Fir Grove property as base camp. His mother, Missy, a hotel chambermaid, had died in the fire. As the flames had consumed his mother, the hate had consumed him. He had even built a shrine to her not very far away from the foundation of the workers’ quarters.

  “Come on, let’s go.” Barto nudged me along with his gun.

  We kept on ahead, insects hurtling themselves into my hand as they flew toward the source of the light.

  “Did you kill the kid?”

  “Yeah,” he said, as if he were telling me the time.

  I was glad I hadn’t run when he gave me the chance. He would have shot me. I could see where this was headed. Brightman would kill Katy and Barto would kill me. It was to be a neat and tidy little package of revenge.

  “The other kid, the one really named Patrick, are you going to kill him too?”

  “You know, Prager, that’s pretty good. How did you know there was two of them?”

  “I wasn’t sure until earlier today. The tattoo artist confirmed that wasn’t her work on the autopsy photos of John James that my man showed her. But I think I had doubts the night I found the kid’s body. He just didn’t look quite right and I could never figure out why the kid would’ve lied to me about his name when there was nothing to gain by it. I guess Patrick is the one that looks more like Katy’s brother.”

  “I don’t know. They looked the same to me. Maybe it’s the one eye thing. You ask me, it was a lot of trouble to go through because of a grudge, but I’m not paying the freight.”

  “You think Connie Geary knows what she’s been paying for?” I asked.

  “Moe, you figured a lot of this shit out. I’m impressed. I gotta hand it to you, you’re pretty fucking smart.”

  “Yeah, just not smart enough. I’m the one walking with the gun stuck in his back. So, Ralph, you didn’t answer me. Are you going to kill the other kid?”

  “Nah.”

  “No!”

  “No. He’s already dead. Brightman killed him in front of your wife. Wanted to give her some closure after all we put her through. It was the least we could do.” Barto snickered as he had on the phone, his true nature showing itself.

  That did it. I lost control and spun around swinging. I caught Barto off guard, but I wasn’t quite quick enough. I got in one good punch, but it glanced off his jaw. He simply stepped back, letting my momentum and gravity pull me down.

  “Nice try,” he said. “I’m gonna enjoy killing you. Let’s go!”

  I ignored the threat and tried to regain my equilibrium. I couldn’t let him get to me anymore. I started talking.

  “What about Martello?”

  “That asshole, what about him? Truth is, it took you a lot longer to get to him than we figured. We thought you’d interview him right away, but you never was very conventional in the way you did things. I suppose if you were, I’d still have my left eye, you’d have your gold shield, and Brightman’d be president. You shoulda just left things alone back then, Moe. What did finding the truth get you anyway?” Barto coughed and spit. “Fucking bugs keep getting in my throat.”

  “That’s why you picked a pewter Yukon, because Martello drove one!”

  “Right. Good thing he liked a roomy ride. It would’ve been hell for me if he drove a Miata. I’d look pretty stupid driving them kids around behind the wheel of one of those little things. Woulda looked like the clown car at the circus. Let me tell you something about that guy Martello, Moe, he mighta come after you one day on his own. He fucking hated you.”

  “When you told Ray what you had in mind for him, did he feel any better about you sacrificing his life in a just cause? I mean, you did drug him up, stick the murder weapon in his pocket, and force him to run into the traffic on Ocean Parkway.”

  Barto snickered again. “You shoulda seen him bounce and skid, man. It was pretty cool.”

  We had nearly reached the crest of the hill. Just a hundred feet ahead and down the hill, in a small glen was where the workers’ quarters had been. I had no doubt that was where Brightman and Katy were waiting. Only a few yards before the crest, Barto ordered me to stop.

  “Turn around!”

  When I turned, I saw Barto raising his weapon at me. What the fuck are you doing? This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen, asshole. I opened my mouth to say something, but found I was so angry I couldn’t speak. He ordered me to back up to the crest. When I stopped, he put twenty or thirty shots at my feet and above my head. I didn’t have time to react. He shook his head at me.

  “Nah, you ain’t a puker,” he said, regarding me with a sick kind of admiration. “You look more pissed off than scared.”

  “Can I ask you one thing before we go?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you really think you’re going to get away with this?”

  “Me, I am gonna get away with it. As for Brightman…I don’t think he gives a shit whether he will or not. I think he’s sorta beyond that. Now, let’s go.”

  When we came over the crest, I saw the little campsite set up where I remembered the foundation had been. There was a sizeable fire going, a pretty big tent, and not another thing in sight. This was no place for a Brooklyn boy to die. Still, any place
was better than a hospital, I thought. As we approached, the tent flap opened and Brightman emerged. Katy was nowhere to be seen. That wasn’t good for a lot of reasons. While I was still confident he hadn’t killed her, I had no hope of saving her if I didn’t know where she was to be saved.

  “Hello, Moe. Still not feeling very smug, are you?”

  “Where’s Katy?”

  “She’s close enough.”

  “Where’s Katy?”

  “Ralph, please teach our guest some manners.”

  I clenched in anticipation of the blow, but it didn’t come.

  “Cut the shit, Brightman,” Barto said, “and let’s get this over with.”

  “Where’s Katy?”

  “Goodness, Moe, you sound like a broken record.”

  “CD.”

  “What?”

  “There are no records anymore, Brightman. It’s CDs and soon there won’t be any of those. That’s your problem, you’re living too much in the past.”

  “Oh, yeah, do you think so? I’ll show you what your problem is.”

  He went back into the tent and came out dragging Katy by her hair. She didn’t struggle. That scared me. She was trussed up, hands to ankles behind her, a strip of duct tape across her mouth. He pulled her up onto her knees. She wasn’t bleeding and there were no obvious cuts or bruises on her, but her eyes were impassive. I hoped it was just shock, but I knew it was more, much more. The last month had plunged her into a deep well with slick and

  very steep walls. Brightman had an automatic in his waistband, but asked Barto for my 38.

  “ This is your problem, Moe,” he said, pulling back the hammer of my. 38 and pressing the short barrel to Katy’s temple. He didn’t pull the trigger. It wasn’t time. He hadn’t gone through all of this to shoot her within two minutes of my arrival. That was good. The longer he took, the better our chances of getting out of this, if not unscathed, then alive.

  “I’m not playing, Brightman.”

  “Yeah,” Barto seconded, “shoot the bitch so I can kill this asshole. Let’s get outta here.”

  “Quiet! I want to savor this. Once she’s dead, I don’t care what you do to him. That’s the deal.”

  “Whatever,” Barto said.

  Brightman got on his knees next to Katy and wrapped his free arm around her shoulder. “I just want you to know that this is all your ex-husband’s doing. Did he ever tell you about what really happened between us? Shake your head yes or no.”

  Katy, her eyes still impassive, shook no.

  “I didn’t think so. Moe does like his secrets, doesn’t he?”

  Silent tears began rolling down Katy’s cheeks and I nearly collapsed. Secrets, the gifts that keep on giving. The pain my silence had caused seemed endless. In a voice barely above a whisper, Brightman explained to Katy how instead of accepting my gold detective’s shield and living happily ever after, I had reopened the investigation into Moira Heaton’s murder. He told her how I had backtracked and discovered that he, Brightman, not Ivan Alfonseca, had murdered Moira.

  “Moira knew too much,” he said. “She knew that I had killed a neighborhood boy when I was a kid. I hadn’t meant to kill him, not really, but what do intentions ever have to do with anything, especially in the face of murder?”

  The flow of tears was much heavier now and Katy’s body shook, the tape muffling her sobs.

  “But did your husband go to the police with the truth? No, he didn’t. Moe, tell Katy what you did.”

  “I told you, Brightman, I’m not playing.”

  Barto shoved me in the back. “Do it!”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then I’ll do it,” Barto said. Brightman’s eyes got angry, but Barto had the bigger gun. “Moe set Brightman up and goaded him into a confession. Even made him piss his pants. What Brightman didn’t know was that his wife and Thomas Geary had watched and listened to the whole thing. There. Now, can we get this over with?”

  I could see in his eyes that Brightman was getting ready for the finale.

  “How could I go to the police?” I said. “I had no proof and all the witnesses were dead.”

  “I thought you weren’t playing,” he said.

  “I waited until you started lying.”

  He shoved the. 38 into Katy’s ribs so hard she crumpled in pain. He pulled her back up. The passivity was gone from her eyes.

  “That’s right, instead of being satisfied with ruining my career, he had to hurt my wife. Ruining me professionally didn’t really cut it for Moe Prager. No, he wanted to punish me in a personal way, so he used my wife.”

  “I always regretted doing that. I realized I’d punished her more than you.”

  “Katerina divorced me in about thirty seconds. She couldn’t understand how she could have shared her bed with a murderer and not have known. That question haunted her for the rest of her life. Did you know she-”

  “-died last summer. Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Katerina was really sweet and one of the most stunningly beautiful women I’ve ever met,” I said. “Cancer, right?”

  “No, it wasn’t cancer, it was the haunting and the guilt.”

  “Guilt?”

  “Oh, so there are things you don’t know?” Brightman taunted.

  He whispered something into Katy’s ear that I couldn’t hear. There was immediate and crushing ache in Katy’s eyes. I hadn’t seen anything like it since the miscarriage, since Connie Geary’s wedding day, when Katy sat sobbing in a stall of the women’s bathroom at the Lonesome Piper County Club. She sobbed now so that even the tape couldn’t contain the sound of it. She cried so hard that her body seemed to convulse.

  “Do you want to know what I told her, Moe?”

  No. “Yes.”

  “I told her that a week after you confronted me on the street and got me to confess my sins, Katerina had an abortion. She was empty after that, empty ever after. That’s what killed her, not cancer.”

  More than anything, I wanted to call him a lying motherfucker. I wanted to accuse him of fabricating that story so he could torture the both of us with it, but I knew he was telling the truth even before the words were fully out of his mouth. And now, finally, I understood why he had gone to such elaborate means.

  “Kill me,” I said, spreading my arms out. “Just leave her alone. Don’t repeat my mistake.”

  Brightman aimed my. 38 as his mouth formed the word no, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything above the thwap thwap thwap of the helicopter blades. The downwash kicked up a storm of dirt and rocks. An intense and blinding spotlight encircled us. I shielded my eyes. There was the bark of gunfire. I spun. Barto’s head rocked back. Crimson spray danced in the light. A flash. Several flashes. Something bit hard into my ankle and burned its way into the bone. I went down. More shots. I pushed my face out of the dirt. Brightman was no longer standing. He was on his back, arms thrown out, one leg bent completely beneath him. I crawled over to Katy.

  The pain in her eyes was gone, with it had gone the light. I pulled the tape off her mouth and put my lips to hers. They were still warm, but the pressure of my weight on her body forced blood out of her mouth and onto my lips. I smeared her blood across my face. I hoped my tears would never wash it away. I was wrong about my destiny. It didn’t lay in front, but behind me.

  There was a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see Agent Markowitz standing at my back, a mournful, pleading look on his face. He was speaking but it was all just twisted lips and a jumble of noise. He pointed at my wrecked ankle, the blood gushing out of it, mixing with the dirt, mixing with the blood of the dead. Markowitz pulled off his shirt and pressed it hard against my leg, his mouth moving the whole time. I was starting to catch words now, a few at a time. He was shouting the same thing at me over and over again. Finally, I understood.

  “How do you feel?”

  I didn’t answer. Brightman’s words were so loud in my head, I didn’t think I would ever hear anything else again. How does it feel? How did I feel? How would I
feel?

  Empty.

  Empty ever after.

  EPILOGUE

  SPREADING THE ASHES

  Sarah received the videotape about a week after we buried Katy. The tape was from Brightman, mailed by proxy-maybe his lawyer, but probably Connie Geary-shortly after his death. On the tape, he confessed to the murders of Carl Stipe, the little boy from his home town, Moira Heaton, and Patrick Farner, the other Patrick Michael Maloney impersonator. Ralph Barto, he said, had murdered John James, Fallon, Martello, and Mary White. He explained to my daughter why he had murdered her mother. It was, he said, my fault for having slowly killed his ex-wife. He took great pains to discuss the details of my involvement.

  When Sarah came to me, there was little I could refute. I hadn’t left things well enough alone all those years ago. I had indeed rejected the offer of the gold shield I had so desperately wanted in order to dig and dig and dig until I found the truth out about Steven Brightman. When I found the truth, I set Brightman up to confess in front of his wife. I had wanted to punish him by using her. And in the end, I shared the truth with almost no one who was directly involved. Carl Stipe’s mother and Moira Heaton’s father went to their graves without knowing what had actually happened to their children.

  Sarah hasn’t spoken to me in nearly a year. She took a leave of absence from the University of Michigan and moved into Francis Maloney’s old house on Hanover Street in Janus. To think that I lost Sarah to him not because of anything he did, but because of my own blindness is irony beyond even my ability to comprehend. Sometimes on rainy nights when I can’t sleep, I imagine I can hear him laughing at me. On those nights I pour myself a Dewar’s, look out my window at the black waters of Sheepshead Bay, and raise my glass to him. “Yes, Francis,” I say, “I do believe in ghosts.”

  Pete Vandervoort keeps me updated about Sarah. She’s still dating Robby, the deputy sheriff. Pete tells me they’re pretty happy together and that Robby’s a good cop. I’ve got nothing against the kid, but I hope like hell he finds another job or Sarah finds another man. Mostly I hope that Sarah can someday forgive me and try to understand that I meant for none of this to happen and that if I could bargain with God, if there was a god to bargain with, I would gladly sacrifice myself to take back even the least of the damage. But as Brightman remarked that night, “What do intentions ever have to do with anything, especially in the face of murder?”