Everything to Lose: A Novel

by Andrew Gross

  And men advancing toward his car. Not cops—or anyone I had seen who looked like a cop. One in a dark leather jacket and jeans. Another in jeans and an Adidas-style warm-up top. No lights flashing everywhere. Or commands barked.

  All I heard was “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” And Brandon crying.

  Charlie hit the gas and his car lurched forward. Just as quickly three black SUVs came out of nowhere and blocked his path. He slammed on the brakes and threw it into reverse, but there was nowhere to move and he smashed into the concrete stanchions of the overhead expressway.

  He went forward again, then saw he was completely pinned in, almost parallel with me again. His eyes were like some mad cornered animal’s. “You stupid fucks,” he said to me, “I warned you not to call the police.”

  “I didn’t call the police,” Patrick met his eyes and said.

  Five or six men surrounded his car, carrying semiautomatic weapons. One of them kicked open the door and Charlie stopped, spun around toward them in fear, then looked back at us with a glower of anger and resignation.

  The largest of them was the size of a tank and had big bushy hair. Only then did it hit me who Patrick had called. The large one seemed to be in charge and he barked out some commands. In Russian. He went into the Escalade and came back out with the garbage bag of cash, Charlie going, “Hey . . . !” as the big guy smacked him across his face with the butt of his gun.

  Then he came over to Patrick. He grinned. “Sergei Lukov thanks you for generous interest payment on the loan.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Patrick said, “but I hope I never hear from him again.”

  “He who has no money needs no purse,” the Russian said. “Here.” He handed Patrick something. “I don’t think he’ll be in need of these.”

  It was the diary pages.

  “Thank you, Yuri.”

  “You better get out of here,” the Russian said. “What happens next is not a sight for little children.”

  Brandon had snaked up front and I squeezed him with everything I had and smothered him with kisses, so grateful I actually had him in my arms, my cheeks burning with joyful tears.

  “Hilary, we have to get out of here,” Patrick said.

  I hit the gas, Brandon still in my arms, and we drove away from the underpass. Through the rearview mirror I saw the men drag Charlie out of his car.

  “By tomorrow morning, he’ll probably be stuffed in an oil drum somewhere,” Patrick said, “at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay.”

  I turned and said over my shoulder to Elena. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, harried, but gave me a grateful smile. “Sí, missus. I am okay.”

  “Thank you” was all I could say. And then the tears started up again. I couldn’t stop them.

  This time tears of joy.

  A mile north on the Bruckner I pulled over. “He tried to hurt me,” Brandon said. “And Elena too, Mommy.”

  “I know he did, baby,” I said, burying my face in his hair. “But he can’t hurt you anymore. Not ever. It’s okay, it’s okay now,” I kept telling him. I looked past him at Patrick. And he smiled back at me. I just kept saying, “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  She was dreaming. Of daffodils.

  It was a clear cold night and the moon was full over the bay. A cone of soft white light left a sheen over the towers of lower Manhattan, a flowery light on the dark water all the way to the bridge.

  Almost like daffodils.

  She waited for the call.

  The call that would let her soul finally breathe easy. That the boy was all right, and the bastard who had taken him to protect that animal who had killed her Deirdre had been dealt with. Then it was what to do with the one who had done this. Who had opened the gates and let in all this hell.

  But the call never came.

  Around two, her eyes grew heavy and she had to close them for a moment. She didn’t even put her two fingers to Tom’s picture on the night table as she did every night. Or recite a Hail Mary to the memory of her daughter, which she’d done before she closed her eyes for the past twenty-two years.

  Sheila had drifted off, to a sleep as sweet as any she’d had in years, daffodils falling from the sky and landing in the palm of her little baby’s hand—maybe five then—when she first heard the noise.

  Just a creak, at first. On the floorboards downstairs. She didn’t even open her eyes. The house made a million noises. The walls seeming to shift with every change of the wind.

  And there were surely no looters around here, though the house lay partially open. With so many cops and firemen, you had to be crazy to come here with malice on your mind.

  She drifted off again and was almost back in the same sweet dream when she heard it again.

  This time on the stairs. Closer. She opened her eyes and checked the clock. Ten after two. Still no word. Maybe soon. She listened, and then there was nothing, nothing for a long time but the wind and the flapping of the tarp fastened to the roof.

  Again she shut her eyes.

  Her daughter’s face was the prettiest thing she ever saw. Who knew what she could have done in life? She wanted to be a vet. She might have gone far. Most of all she was happy. She had a smile like green meadows peeking through a cover of clouds, like the sun shining, Sheila fell back into her dream, on the pretty hill with—

  This time her eyes jumped open. She felt something, a creepy presence that knifed through her like a chill. In the room.

  This time the creaking of the floorboard went right through her. Sheila spun around and tried to let out a scream.

  It never got out. There was a person directly above her on the edge of her bed and he cupped his hand tightly over her mouth.

  She knew him—his face was like an indelible image in her mind since she had first seen it, first heard the name, only a month before.

  The devil’s face.

  Her first thought was to go for the gun Tom always kept in the top drawer of the night table, but his hand held her back so firmly she couldn’t move.

  Her next thought was of her husband. That today would be a good day for Tom in heaven, for she would surely see him soon.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mrs. O’Byrne . . .” The man on the bed smiled. “You may not know who I am, but I was a friend of your daughter’s.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Oh, Jesus, no . . . ,” Patrick exhaled grimly from the back.

  I spun around.

  “Hilary, turn around, quick,” he instructed me. “I need to get back to my car.”

  We were still pulled over on the side of the expressway near the housing projects, Brandon buried in my arms. The worry in Patrick’s voice was clear.

  “What’s happened?”

  “I just got a couple of texts from two of my neighbors. There’s been a fire at Mrs. O’Byrne’s house. They think she’s still trapped inside.”

  “Oh, Patrick, no. My God!”

  “I have to get back there,” he said. “Hilary, listen, drop Elena off back at her house, but I don’t want you going back to yours. Is there somewhere you can go? A friend’s? A hotel? Anywhere?”

  “It’s two thirty in the morning, Patrick.”

  “Just until I’m back. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I can. Tomorrow we’ll go to the police with what we have on Landry.”

  “Please, Mrs. Cantor . . . ,” Elena injected in her broken English. “You can stay with me. At my house.”

  “I’ll figure something out,” I said, tenderly grasping her arm. Brandon was stirring. “Here, baby.” I buckled him in the seat next to me. “Stay over here.”

  “Just promise me you’ll do that.” Patrick’s gaze was resolute. “I don’t want you going anywhere near your house.”

  “Okay, I won’t.” I nodded. “I promise.”

  It took no more than three minutes to get back to Patrick’s truck near the RFK Bridge. We passed the spot beneath the expressway where we’
d just been with Mirho. The Russians’ vehicles were gone. So was Charlie’s. There was no sign of him. No doubt Patrick was right. He probably had a bullet in his head by now.

  We didn’t stop for a single light as we made our way back to the truck. When we got there, Patrick jumped out. He smiled, happily, at me; Mirho was dead, I had my son. Everything had worked out. But it was a worried smile at the same time, as he looked at me with Brandon. “There’s something I want to say . . .”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Not now. I’ll call you when I know something.”

  “Patrick, I hope she’s all right.”

  “I know. Thanks. You know I hoped we could just bury all this—that’s why I called in Yuri. Handle it privately.” He smiled. “Now I know that can’t happen.”

  “I understand,” I said. His hand was wrapped around my lowered window and I placed mine over his. There was almost sorrow in his eyes.

  “You know what that means, don’t you, if we go after Landry?”

  It meant an investigation. It meant coming clean on all I’d done. And all that came with it.

  Patrick too.

  I nodded.

  “I love my son. But I’m with you, Patrick. I’m ready for whatever it is.”

  He smiled wistfully and wrapped his fingers around my hand. “I have to go.” There was something in his eyes. Something both unsettled yet pleased at the same time. Looking at me with my hand over Brandon’s face, my son leaning into me. As if it was almost like the one certain thing in the face of everything uncertain that was about to happen. Almost freeing.

  His life was about to come crashing down too.

  He had squeezed my arm and taken a step away when he suddenly came back and put his hands on my cheeks and leaned in and gave me a kiss. A brief one, but one that was full of life and alive with what lay ahead. Warm with possibilities.

  “Mom of the Year.” He pointed as he went back to his truck. “You’ve got my vote locked.”

  “Thank you for what you did,” I said. “For everything.”

  “Remember . . . ,” he said.

  “I got it, Patrick. I won’t go back home. I’ll let you know where I am when I figure it out.”

  He jumped in his truck. He started it up and pulled out into the street ahead of me. I followed him for a couple of blocks, amid the all-night gas stations and shuttered-up auto shops, until it was time for me to turn and head north, and for him to go onto the RFK Bridge, then the BQE, which led across the Verrazano. I kept an eye on his truck in my mirror until it turned out of sight. Then Brandon murmured in the seat next to me, “Where are we going, Mommy?”

  I didn’t know where we were going. Until someone entered my mind. Somone I knew I could call. I took my phone out. I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to be there with him, my beautiful little angel. “We’re almost there, Brandon. Just one more day and then we can go home.”

  I prayed.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  I had to do it, of course.

  She knew. She could bring me down. Even without the diary. I had to protect my kids, right? They’d been through so much. I couldn’t let it all come out. Not with what was now on the line.

  Not now.

  It was strange as I pressed the pillow over her face and held it there. Feeling her legs thrash and kick. There was still a lot of life in her for an old bitch. Stubborn. I said to her, why resist? That she would see her daughter soon. What was left for her here but to damn me? Still, she didn’t want to die.

  I was struck that all these years later, it was pretty much the same way I had done it to her daughter. Who I rarely thought of these days. And as I felt her resistance start to wane, her fists lose their power against me, her legs slowly give up the fight, it brought me back. All the way to where it all started for me. Here in Staten Island. Under another bridge. Well, maybe not where it all started . . . It had already begun a long time ago. Todd. That mangy, little dog Jerry. I’d always had that dark edge, my mother always said. I thought I was free of it, but truth be told, I might as well have ended up in that hole next to Deirdre. Stuffed into that drum. Smelling of rot and decay. Food for the rodents and spiders. Because that’s how it’s been for me.

  All these years holding it in.

  So it had to be done. I mean, I couldn’t let her ruin me. I had to burn the house. The fire was just a diversion. To cover what I’d done and just in case there were any remnants that could incriminate me. But there was also another purpose. Even more important.

  As a lure.

  To draw him here.

  Charlie had his job to do, but I had mine.

  So I had to do it. I had to protect my family. She knew.

  They all knew.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  We might have gotten away with it, Patrick thought, climbing the steps of his father’s house. Two hours had passed. The street was still ablaze with lights from the smoldering fire and EMTs and fire crews.

  We might have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for Mrs. O’B.

  Mirho was history. Gone without a trace. Hilary had paid off her debts. Patrick had paid off his too. Who would ever even know, if they just wanted to keep it all quiet?

  But there was Mrs. O’B. He recalled the last thing she had ever said to him.

  “You make him pay, Patrick.” Make him pay.

  He’d watched in silent rage after he’d rushed to the house and saw it burn. The house he had been inside a thousand times. Almost like his own house while he was growing up. He had to be restrained like the rest of the street to stay behind the perimeter. As he watched, knowing she was still inside, he had no idea if Landry had been behind this or not. Or whether it was a cigarette she hadn’t put out before falling asleep, as Patrick always warned.

  But he suspected Landry was. And there was no way he could let him get away with any of it now. Now that they knew the whole story. Now that they had the one thing that could connect him back to Deirdre. Come morning, it would all have to come out. Whatever happened would happen, he and Hilary agreed.

  That was clear when he stood there watching the last of her house burn down.

  Deirdre, Tom. The last of her possessions.

  They’d almost gotten away with it, but there was no hiding it now.

  He was there when they finally carried her out. A small mound on the EMS stretcher. He was able to stop them for a second before they put her into the van. “Family?” they asked. “Yes,” he said. She was almost like a second mother to him. He was as close as she had there. Maybe fifty people from the neighborhood gathered around to watch. Friends, neighbors. He was able to touch her hand, which had fallen out from under the sheet.

  Make him pay.

  On his father’s porch, Patrick turned and saw a thin orange light start to creep over the towers of lower Manhattan. In a million years he would never have thought it would come to this. He’d spent his whole life doing what was right. He’d gotten himself into a good school, joined the force out of college when he could have done almost anything with his life. Rose quickly through the ranks. Took the community job when it was offered. Lots of cops crossed the line, committed crimes. But he was the last one he would ever have imagined doing it. Now he had and he would have to pay. Even if it had been for a good reason, helping out his sister.

  The right reasons maybe, but still a crime. Just like Hilary had.

  And now, when it was light, he would put a stop to it. They’d go to the police and turn themselves in.

  He opened the door and stepped into his family’s home. The back deck was still partially open and Patrick felt a crisp breeze as he looked out at the bay. He had to call Hilary. He saw she had called him twice in the past hour and texted him where she was. At her friend Robin’s, she said. He was glad she was safe.

  As he looked out, he saw in a flash how everything was linked. As if part of a vast chain, a chain that had linked so many unsuspecting and disparate parts. His dad. Mr. and Mrs. O’Byrne. Deir
dre. Hilary. Even Rollie.

  A car that drove off the road leading to an unsolved murder twenty years ago.

  All connected to a storm, a storm that at first took everything they had and then washed some of it back onshore. He saw it that way, maybe for the first time.

  He took out his phone and went to text Hilary back.

  He never felt the person who came up from behind him. Only the hand that wrapped across his face, wrenching it backward, the blade driven deep into his side, unleashing a shock wave of searing pain.

  He let out an agonizing gasp.

  He was trained to protect himself, though he’d been behind a desk for many years. And maybe if he hadn’t been preoccupied he would have heard him and swung around. Or at least faced him, the person who was about to rob him of the one thing he’d sworn to do.

  Make him pay.

  But his killer had been trained too. For a lifetime.

  Patrick reached back around him, the phone falling out of his grasp. He stabbed for his gun, but his strength leaked away, like water slowly circling down a drain. His assailant’s hand was viselike across his throat. The other hand removed the gun from Patrick’s belt and kicked it aside.

  “You should have just left it all alone,” the man said into Patrick’s ear. “It was just a stupid little diary. It didn’t mean anything to anybody anymore. Just some old bitch . . .”

  He dug the knife in deeper.

  Patrick’s knees buckled. Yes, it did. It did matter. He reached for his side and felt the thick pool of blood matting there. It did! With a gasp, summoning everything he had, he bent and lifted his assailant into the air, staggering to keep upright, fighting the pain and his sagging strength, and rolled him over his back and onto the floor. He faced him, his legs jelly, the knife still in his abdomen.

  Deirdre’s killer.

  “It does matter,” Patrick said. It does.

  He wanted with everything he had to show him just how much. Instead, he dropped to his knees. He dug at the knife, trying to pull it out. Everything grew gauzy.