The Water's Edge

by Daniel Judson

  Bechet nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Jake. It was fun, there was something . . . gratifying in not being burdened by our pasts, not being identified by them. In its own way, oddly enough, it was healing. But like I said, it’s just time now to be realistic again.”

  “You should really think about going back to school, Elle. I mean, if a doctor is what you want to be, don’t let fear stop you.”

  “Debt makes me nervous still.”

  “I could pay for it.”

  “How?”

  “I could sell these buildings. Or just this one, keep the one next door for security’s sake. Don’t need both, and the rent I collect from next door would more than pay for a decent enough place in Cambridge.”

  Gabrielle smiled again. “Thanks, Jake, but if I decide to go back to school, I’ll find a way to do it. I’m a big girl.”

  “A doctor in the family might be a good thing, is all,” Bechet said. “Anyway, we’ll talk about it. I think maybe there’s a difference between accepting help and relying on it.” He had stepped to the opposing window as he spoke, was looking now down at the sedan.

  “So what’s next?” Gabrielle said.

  “I’m going to need to go back to Southampton in a little while.”

  “What for?”

  “There’s one loose end I need to tie up.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  “You better not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because alive or dead, I’ll be bringing Bobby with me. If I get pulled over, I’d rather you weren’t sitting next to me.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Not long.”

  “I don’t want to wait for you here. Not now.”

  “Take a cab into the city, check into a hotel, don’t tell me which one. Stay there till I call you, okay? If when I do call I call you Elle, it means everything is okay, tell me where you are and I’ll be there in two hours. If I call you Gabrielle, though, hang up and get out of town.”

  Bechet, always cautious, always thinking steps ahead.

  “And what if you don’t call at all?” Gabrielle said.

  He knew by her eyes what she was thinking. One evening her parents had gone out for dinner and never come back. That was a drive on a foggy night that turned bad. This would be a drive on a foggy night in a stolen sedan with a dying gun-shot man in the backseat, not to mention a driver with an injured hand, cracked head, and bruised sternum working on no sleep.

  “You’ll hear from me, Elle,” Bechet said. “I promise.”

  He phoned for a cab, took all the money from his pockets and put it into Gabrielle’s ditty bag, the one she had carried with her when she fled their old life. When the cab arrived a few minutes later, he led her outside. It had stopped raining, and at the open back door, while the driver watched them, Gabrielle kissed Bechet, hard, as if, somehow, they had never been lovers and this kiss, initiated by her, was their first. Then she got into the cab, sat with the bag on her lap. Bechet closed the door, and she looked at him through the window in the seconds before the cab pulled away.

  When it was gone from sight, Bechet surveyed his street. A row of two-story brick buildings like his own, most of them unoccupied, their windows boarded over. Three blocks to the east was the heart of Williamsburg, an enclave for artists and young hipsters. To the west, just feet from his heavy steel door, was the edge of the East River.

  Back inside, in his bedroom, Bechet searched till he found a handheld digital recording device, loaded in a fresh battery, then grabbed a tube of smelling salts from his first-aid kit. Back down on the loading dock, he crushed the tube and held it directly under his friend’s nose till he regained consciousness. It took a moment, but once Falcetti was alert enough, Bechet tossed the broken tube away and then sat behind the wheel of the sedan, facing forward. Looking over his shoulder into the backseat, he watched Falcetti struggle to make and maintain eye contact. There was, finally, cognition, but Bechet knew by the look of his friend this was not only his chance, it was the only chance he was going to get.

  He switched on the recording device, laid it on the seat beside him.

  “I need you to tell me what’s going on, Bobby,” he said. “I need to know what you know, and I need to know it right now.”

  Falcetti was wrapped in an old blanket, his head propped up on a pillow. His breathing was labored, there was a rattle in his chest, and his lips were dried and cracked. The marks of the beating he had taken the night before, though still visible on his face, were the least grave-looking thing about him now.

  “I don’t really feel so great,” he muttered. “Can I have some water?”

  “We don’t have a lot of time, Bobby. We’ll talk first, then I’ll get you some water.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Is LeCur the traitor in Castello’s family?”

  Falcetti nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I need to know what was he up to.”

  “He had a scheme to rob Castello. Him and someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know his name. I never met him.”

  “What was the scheme?”

  “Force Castello’s couriers to skim off the top. If they didn’t, LeCur’s partner would make sure they went to jail for a long time.”

  “Was LeCur’s partner a cop?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw his face. Maybe. That would make sense.”

  “If these couriers got caught stealing from Castello, they’d be killed. Their girlfriends would be killed. Why would they risk that, even with the threat of going to prison hanging over them? Why didn’t they just take off?”

  “LeCur promised them a cut once they were done. Plus, he convinced them they wouldn’t get caught, that his father was in on it, too, and they’d be protected.”

  “Was his father in on it?”

  “Not really.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He kept tabs of everything that went out and came in, so he knew stuff was missing. He had to have suspected that his son was involved. Who else would know enough about the organization to pull an inside job like that? LeCur counted on his father saying nothing. What was the old man going to do, turn in his only child to Castello?”

  “So what went wrong? Why were the couriers killed?”

  Falcetti took a breath, began immediately to cough. Bechet listened to the rattle of the fluid collecting in his friend’s lungs, building. After the coughing finally stopped, Falcetti closed his eyes, seemed to need a moment. Bechet gave it to him, or as much of it as he could, then said again, “Why were the couriers killed, Bobby?”

  Falcetti opened his eyes again, took a careful, shallow breath, and continued.

  “It turned out they were skimming more than what they were supposed to,” he said. “Double, in fact, and keeping the extra for themselves. LeCur’s father could only cover for part of what was being skimmed, the amount LeCur told the couriers to take. LeCur knew that, knew how much the old man could fudge. But there was no way he could cover for the extra. Castello eventually found out, and naturally he wanted to know who was behind it.”

  “And since the couriers knew, LeCur and his partner killed them.”

  “It was their contingency plan all along. The couriers being killed in the way they were would look like Castello’s work. It was their way out if it all turned to shit.”

  “LeCur and his partner were the two men on the bridge.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “I saw them.”

  “How?”

  “I was in on the plan, was supposed to be their alibi. They called for a cab, and instead of picking them up I was supposed to park somewhere out of sight and wait. If something went wrong, I was supposed to say I was driving them out to East Hampton at the time of the murder.”

  “But you didn’t park somewhere and wait?”

  “No. I hid in the w
oods behind the train tracks and watched.”

  “You did more than that, though, right?” Bechet said. “You videotaped it, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. My share for providing them with an alibi would have paid off my debts, but nothing would have been left over. I figured one way or another, a tape of the murder might be worth something.”

  “How close were you?”

  “Close enough. Plus, the thing has a zoom.”

  “It would be helpful if we knew who LeCur’s partner was. Do you still have the tape?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “You took it, remember?”

  Bechet nodded, thought about that, then said, “So what did you see?”

  “The whole thing. LeCur and his buddy chopped those guys’ hands off and then hanged them. I’d never seen anyone killed before, let alone like that.”

  “That’s why you were so jumpy. When I was towing you out of the ditch, I mean. That’s why you were acting the way you were. That’s why you were dressed the way you were.”

  “My hands were still shaking, I kept trying to hide them from you. That fucking dog ran out in front of me, just came out of nowhere. I was so spooked by what I’d seen that I totally overreacted, spun myself out of control. The crash was nothing, I’d been in worse back in my smashup derby days. Still, I thought my heart was going to explode, I was so freaked-out.”

  “The bar in Wainscott, then, if you and LeCur were buddies, what was that all about?”

  “He was still working for Castello, had to do what Castello wanted him to do. When they snagged me, I thought it was because of what we were up to, that that was it, I was a dead man. Turned out, though, Castello needed me to bring you out in the open so he could talk to you.”

  “And LeCur beat you up even though you guys were partners.”

  Falcetti shrugged. “He had to. Castello didn’t know he and I knew each other, it had to stay that way. There was so much money at stake.”

  “You told Castello about Gabrielle. That’s how he got her information so fast.”

  Falcetti nodded.

  “Who else knows about her?”

  “Just Castello.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “LeCur and his father knew, but that doesn’t matter now, does it? You killed the old man, right? LeCur assumed you did, said he didn’t care that Castello wanted you alive, that he was going to kill you the next time he saw you. It doesn’t matter to me, man, but you killed the old man, right?”

  Bechet ignored the question. “What do you know about Romano’s girlfriend?”

  “What about her?”

  “Was she murdered?”

  “Yeah.”

  “By LeCur and his partner?”

  “Yeah. The partner took the girl away, and LeCur and I stayed and searched the place. I didn’t know what I was doing. Neither did LeCur, really. We couldn’t find what we were looking for, and then the partner came back with the girl. He and LeCur put her in the tub and killed her, made it look like a suicide.”

  “You were there?”

  “Yeah. It was terrible.”

  “Did you see the partner’s face?”

  “No, he had a ski mask on the whole time.”

  Falcetti started coughing again, these coughs worse than ones before, like seizures. Bechet waited till these passed, watching his friend, then said, “How was his partner built? Was he tall, short, what?”

  “Stocky, big shoulders. He had this round gut, like a pregnant woman.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “An old raincoat. It was covered with the girl’s blood when he left. You should have heard her while they were cutting her. And I thought what I’d seen on the bridge was bad. I knew then I was in over my head. The partner had taken some Polaroids of the girl back at the Water’s Edge, when he was making her tell him Abby’s number. Staged them to look like bondage photos. He planted them in the cottage, I guess to explain the bruises that were made when they held her down in the tub. ‘S and M freak kills self,’ is what the headline was supposed to read, I guess.”

  Bechet thought about that. LeCur had certainly learned his old man’s tricks. But then Bechet pushed that thought—every element of it—out of his head.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I was left to watch the place, and when that Miller guy went in, I called LeCur. He told me to get out of there. I guess LeCur or his partner called the police for some reason. I heard the sirens as I was driving away.”

  “You were the one who ran Miller and me off the road, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “LeCur’s partner had seen Miller talking to some cop or something, and then suddenly Miller showed up at that cottage. They didn’t know what he was up to, figured it wasn’t good whatever it was, so they wanted him dead.”

  “But you didn’t shoot him.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Did they want me dead, too?”

  “They knew Castello had asked you to find the traitor.”

  “So that’s a yes.”

  Falcetti nodded. “They didn’t want to take any chances. There was no way I could have done that, though, man. I couldn’t even kill that Miller guy.” He paused, closed his eyes, then reopened them again. His face was covered with sweat. “How could someone do that? Just kill someone ’cause they’re told to.”

  Bechet looked through the windshield for a moment, then back at Falcetti again.

  “Abby has what the couriers took for themselves, doesn’t she?” Bechet said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ecstasy pills, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know what it’s worth? What the couriers took for themselves?”

  “A million, give or take.”

  “And that would fit in a suitcase.”

  “Easy, yeah.”

  Bechet thought about that. “Where is she now, Bobby?”

  “I don’t know. LeCur’s partner has been trying to find her.”

  “Because she knows too much.”

  “That, and he wants the extra the couriers took for themselves, thinks it belongs to him.”

  “Do you know if he’s found her?”

  “Last I knew, no. She’s probably long gone, though. That was the plan—she and the girl and Michaels and Romano, they were going to take off with their share, sell it for the quick cash, go somewhere and never be heard from again. Not a bad plan, actually.”

  “LeCur and his partner didn’t know where Abby lived?”

  “No, they did.”

  “How?”

  “They followed Michaels there one night, or something like that. They don’t miss a trick. But by the time they realized Michaels had given her the stuff it was too late. She was long gone, and someone had already been to her place.”

  “How’d they know that?”

  “Something that should have been there wasn’t.”

  “Do you know what?”

  “No. Before they killed Romano’s girlfriend, LeCur’s partner tried to get her to tell him where Abby went, but apparently she didn’t know.”

  Bechet thought about the other tricks LeCur certainly had learned from his father—or from Castello, for that matter—the many ways of getting someone to talk. A soaked rag stuffed deep into the mouth, a few gallons of water poured over it. Or, if not water, then gasoline. Fear of drowning as well as the fear of, at any minute, being set on fire. Bruises left by the restraints holding the victim’s hands down would certainly look like the marks of rough sex play.

  Again, Bechet had to will his mind clear.

  “We’re almost done, Bobby,” he said. “I need you to tell me exactly what you saw on the bridge last night.”

  “They came out of the basement of that bar.”

  “The Water’s Edge?”

  Falcetti nodded. “Yeah. That’s where they took the couriers to try to get them to talk, tell th
em who had the goods. That’s where Castello’s lab is, too. Way underground, in some subbasement or something. The train tracks run right behind that place, so they walked the couriers onto the tracks and then out onto the bridge. Just far enough out so they’d be over the canal. They hacked their hands off, tossed the hands into the water, then hung them by their necks. First one, and then the other.”

  “What did they do when it was done?”

  “They walked up the tracks, stepped across a board they had put there so they wouldn’t leave footprints in the mud, then crossed the pavement and went back inside the bar. They got blood on their coats and burned them in the furnace.”

  Bechet remembered the black smoke he had seen rising from one of the three crumbling chimneys as he stood behind Tide Runner’s, looking across the canal.

  “You’re sure it was them? LeCur and his partner?”

  “I heard LeCur, that accent of his, when they were walking by. And the other had that round gut. Solid guy, big shoulders, but this round gut. I remember that he had galoshes on over his shoes. At the canal, and at the cottage, too. Those were the only two times I saw him. LeCur said the guy always wore expensive shoes, kept them shiny, didn’t like getting them dirty.”

  Bechet thought about that, but not for long; it meant nothing to him.

  “Listen, I don’t really feel all that well, man,” Falcetti said. “I could use some water.”

  “Just one more question, Bobby.”

  Falcetti waited.

  “Why did LeCur kill Scarcella?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to. He was just supposed to grab him, for Castello.”

  “Why did Castello want Scarcella grabbed?”

  “There was something Scarcella’s father had that Castello wanted. He was going to trade Scarcella’s son for it.”

  “Do you know what it was Scarcella had that Castello wanted?”

  “It was evidence or something.”

  Bechet nodded, looked through the windshield again. After a moment, he said, “If LeCur was supposed to grab Scarcella, why was he killed?”

  “I guess he put up a fight and LeCur ended up taking him out. If you ask me, I think LeCur was just looking for an excuse to do it. Once his partner found Abby and they split up what she had, LeCur was going to blow town. He already had his share of the cash-out from what he and his partner got from the couriers. The last thing he probably wanted was to be stuck watching Scarcella.”