“Exactly. He waits nearby till the bodies are discovered. Or maybe he has one of his lackeys call in that they heard shots, and he arrives shortly after the first cop, says he heard the call on his radio, gets there before Roffman can and directs the cop’s attention to the DVR lying there next to one of us. By the time anyone knows what’s on it, it’s too late for Roffman to lose it.”
“He’s going to kill all three of us, just like that?”
“He can suggest any story he wants. He could say it was a love triangle gone bad, Tommy killed you and me and then shot himself. There’d be the record of you calling Tommy from your cell phone, maybe Tommy figured out you were here with me, came to confront us. You were involved with Roffman, so it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch for someone to think you had been involved with Tommy and were now involved with me. Everyone loves to think the worst of the woman, don’t they? The fact that I stuck up for you all this time would only convince people that you and I had something going on.”
“But he’d have to kill three people. I mean, three people he knew.”
“You give people too much credit, Kay,” Spadaro said. “He’s a psychopath. Think about it. Ever see him anything other than cool and detached? I swear to God, I’ve never seen him sweat, not once. I guarantee you he has no anticipatory anxiety. I guarantee you he’s fearless. Look at him.”
Barton did. Nothing about Mancini’s demeanor, despite everything that was going on and being said, had changed. Finally, Mancini looked at her. Like she was nothing. For the first time, she understood how he had been able to remain neutral as she had suffered, while everything she had worked for was stripped from her.
“I’d offer to kick you a share, Kay, in exchange for your silence,” Mancini said, “but there’d really be no point in that, would there?”
Barton said nothing.
“I’d rather not kill you if I don’t have to. It’s not too late to be reasonable. We’d all benefit from Roffman falling on his face, as you put it. You’d be a cop again, Spadaro would have for once bet on the right horse.”
Barton, puzzled again, looked at Spadaro. Bet on the right horse? Before she could say anything, though, Mancini spoke.
“I didn’t need to tap his phone, Kay. I didn’t need to bug his desk. He was more than happy to tell me everything I needed to know, whenever I needed to know it. He’s been doing that for a while now.”
Barton stared at Spadaro, dumbstruck.
“In his defense,” Mancini said, “he did think he was helping things, that Roffman was up to something and that he and I were going to catch him in the act. It seems that manipulating a Boy Scout isn’t all that different from manipulating a man with a guilty conscience. You tell the Boy Scout what he wants to hear and the guilty man what he doesn’t want to hear, then let them do the rest.”
“Ricky,” Barton said finally.
“I didn’t know he was in Castello’s pocket, Kay. How could I have?” Spadaro looked at Barton for a moment, then at Mancini. “More than likely Castello was paying him to keep an eye on Roffman. At least that’s the most popular theory. Insurance against Roffman making a move against Castello. That’s how he would know to play them against each other. That’s how he’d be able to handpick the right people to help him set this whole thing up. He’s a smart man, all right, but he’s not the smartest man.”
All eyes were on Spadaro now.
“You think I’d just come here, Mancini, without checking into some things,” he said. “And not just your relationship with Castello, other things, like those calls to the cab companies this morning. They were made from Roffman’s office all right, but when Roffman wasn’t in. And I think once we check his cell phone records we’ll find that he, in fact, got a call from Abby Shepard’s apartment two nights before the murders. All that’s left is a warrant to search your house, which shouldn’t be difficult to get now. My bet is we find a whole pile of cash stashed somewhere inside, your split of what the couriers stole. Maybe even more. God knows what you’ve had your hand in before this scheme.”
“You’re a smart man, too,” Mancini said, “good for you. But you’re also a dead man, so little good your smarts will end up doing you. As far as what I’m going to do now, the one thing you got wrong, really, is that I’m not going to kill all three of you here. That would be too much bloodshed in the same place, would look suspicious. Maybe a suicide—if Miller is stoned out of his mind, that would be easy enough to set up and more than enough to accomplish what I need. That would leave you, Spadaro, and your friend here. After I march you both back across the bridge, walk you into that big basement, it’ll be like you two never even existed. I close the door behind us and no one will ever see you again, not even the pieces of you.”
Spadaro said nothing.
“The advantage of being a psychopath, as you put it, is it’s easier to do what needs to be done.”
“No fear to slow you down.”
“If you ask me, Ricky, the world was made by men who were willing to do what it took.”
“That makes you, what, Brutus to his Caesar?”
“Something like that.”
“Why not just kill Roffman then? Why all this?”
“Bringing your enemy down is one thing. Profiting handsomely from it is something else altogether.” Mancini glanced back at the dark building behind them. “I’ve always wanted a restaurant,” he said. “Apparently this one might be going into foreclosure soon. I look at it as an unexpected bonus.”
“You killed him, too. Adamson.”
“Maybe he saw something, maybe he didn’t. Roffman kept his statement under lock and key, so there was no way of knowing. Better safe than sorry, right?”
Spadaro nodded for a moment, almost absently, then reached for his other jacket pocket. Mancini raised the gun, extending his arm and aiming it at Spadaro’s face. Take it easy. Pausing for a second to establish that he wasn’t up to anything, Spadaro resumed reaching for his pocket, moving with that same deliberate slowness as before. With two fingers he reached in and removed his cell phone, held it up for Mancini to see.
Barton looked at it, recognized what was on the display.
An animation of a phone off the hook and a series of moving arrows indicating that a line was open and active. Below the animation was the word VOICE MAIL.
“I made this call the moment I started recording,” Spadaro said. “The digital recorder you tossed into the canal, that played everything you guys said from a little built-in speaker. All I had to do was hold my phone up to it. I thought it might be smart for us to have a backup—you know, just in case.”
“Smart man, indeed,” Mancini said. “Hand it over, please.”
Spadaro ended the call, then tossed the phone to Mancini. Catching it without taking his eyes off Spadaro, Mancini glanced quickly down at the display. It was clear to Spadaro what Mancini had in mind.
“I didn’t call my cell phone voice mail, Detective, so don’t expect to just hit redial and erase the message. I called the voice mail system at the station. No way you can erase that, not without my password. If anything should happen to me, Roffman gets the system administrator to access my voice mail. Standard procedure, right? He does that and he hears everything that’s been said here.”
Mancini didn’t miss a beat, swung his arm a few feet to his right and pointed the handgun at Barton.
“I guess I’m going to need that password, then, huh?” he said. “You can give it to me now or she can start taking bullets in places that hurt.”
“You being a hotshot card player and all, Detective, I would have expected your bluffs to be better than that. You’re not about to start shooting out here in the open like this.”
“It’s a good thing, then, that I know of a place nearby that’s nice and private. Why don’t the two of you be good kids and start walking up toward the tracks.”
Neither Barton nor Spadaro moved. Even now Mancini wore that blank look of neutrality. Not a trace of sweat,
not a tremor in his hand, eyes as steady and dark as a bird’s. How could Barton not have seen that before? Now she could see nothing but that. The man was ice, everything he was doing, everything she had ever seen him do, said that, screamed it.
“You’re out of time,” Spadaro said.
“Just the opposite, actually. We’ve got all night to work this out among us.”
“You kill us, you lose.”
“You’d be surprised how much hurt a person can take without actually coming anywhere near dying. I’ve realized recently that it’s not just the pain that fucks with you, there’s a big humiliation factor as well—that is, when you’re being made to suffer in front of someone else, someone close to you. They see you scared, see you cry, hear you scream and beg. Ugly, ugly stuff for everyone involved.”
Barton’s heart gunned suddenly. She thought of what she had told Miller when they met at Cooper’s Neck. It’s easier to suffer alone. She had kept to herself, stayed away from Miller, from everyone, so the scars of her disgrace would, if not heal, then at least go unnoticed. But the terror of her depression being known was nothing compared to the thoughts of violation that Mancini promised and that flashed now in her mind like scenes caught in lightning.
“Of course, you’re both forgetting something,” Mancini said. “I know where Miller is. I agree with you, Ricky, it is smart to have a backup.”
“You think we didn’t make sure he was safe before coming here?” Spadaro said. “You think we didn’t stash the DVR somewhere you’d never find it?”
Mancini smiled. “Now who’s bluffing?”
“And if I’m not?”
The detective’s smile grew just a little. “What can I say, I like to gamble.”
“It’s an awful lot to lose,” Barton said.
Mancini looked at her as if he had forgotten she was there. “Then it wouldn’t be much of a gamble, would it?” he said. He nodded toward the stairs. “C’mon, let’s all of us start walking to the tracks.”
Spadaro opened his mouth to speak, got a few words out, something about all this being over, but Mancini had had enough, lunged without warning toward Spadaro with his extended gun hand, shifting the angle of his wrist just as he reached Spadaro’s face so that he smacked him in the nose with the butt of the gun. Mancini had moved with more speed than Barton would have thought possible for a man built as he was. The savage lashing out of an animal, no hint of thought before it. As Spadaro staggered back from the force of the blow, he stumbled on the bottom step and fell onto the stairs leading up to the parking lot. Quickly recovering his shooter’s stance, Mancini aimed the gun at Barton’s face just as she took a step toward him.
“Get him up,” Mancini hissed, “and start walking.”
Spadaro was already halfway to his feet, though, when Barton reached him. He had gotten up quickly, the way a son might, Barton thought, after having been struck down by his own father for what, the son was determined, would be the last time.
Spadaro faced Mancini, glaring at him. “Admit it,” he spat. “You’ve been outplayed. The hand you’re holding is shit, we all know it.”
“I’ve held worse,” Mancini said.
“You’re going to have to kill me right here.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Ricky. It doesn’t have to be this way at all. You helped me out, I’ll remember that. I make good on my promises. Just give me the password and Roffman goes down like he should, we all get what we want.”
Spadaro was seething. “Fuck you.”
“Jesus, Ricky, forget about being a Boy Scout for once, forget about your little friend here. This isn’t just your job this time, this is your life. Don’t make the same stupid mistake again, not for a slut like her. I don’t care how good with her mouth she’s supposed to be.”
“You’re insane, Mancini. You know that, right?”
“She’s not worth it. You don’t have to make the same mistake twice. Tell her to call Miller and give me the password. That’s all you have to do. Make the right choice for once in your life.”
In the end, Spadaro did the only thing he could.
It happened fast, Spadaro lunging at Mancini with even more speed than Mancini had lunged at him. Barton wasn’t even sure if Mancini had meant to fire, or if Spadaro’s sudden movement had caused Mancini’s trigger finger to twitch, but whatever the cause, the gun went off just as Spadaro, ducking under Mancini’s outstretched arm, was moving in for a tackle. The sound of the gunshot, so close to his ear, caused Spadaro to shout “Motherfucker” in pain. Then the two men collided, Spadaro tall and athletic and in his mid-thirties, Mancini a bull of a man in his fifties. Though Mancini was older and, compared to Spadaro, out of shape, he was also more experienced, more—and maybe this was all that really mattered—vicious. Low and squat, he kept his balance as Spadaro charged him, then stepped slightly to the side, pulling Spadaro with him, pulling Spadaro off balance. As they faced each other, Mancini brought his knee up, a sharp, sudden motion, landing his thigh with tremendous force squarely into Spadaro’s groin. There was nothing Spadaro could have done, and he grunted when the blow landed, sinking in deep, and heaved forward, his legs buckling beneath him immediately. Barton was in motion by then, launching herself into the fray, grabbing Mancini’s gun hand and going for a wrist lock. She was, though, just too weak. Stunned and gasping for air, still clinging to Mancini, Spadaro started to go down, bringing Mancini with him. Barton, holding on to Mancini’s wrist, went down as well, all three of them a tangle of bodies on the wet deck planks—grasping arms and kicking legs, a frantic and brutal struggle for nothing less than who lived and who died.
Mancini quickly went to work on Spadaro, striking him several times with his free hand—open palm strikes, all but bouncing Spadaro’s head off the hard wood. As he did this, Barton made another attempt at a wrist lock, was close to getting one when Mancini abandoned his attack on Spadaro and mounted Barton like a schoolyard bully. So fast, so god-damned fast. She did then the only thing she could do, gave up on the joint lock and pulled on Mancini’s wrist, not to bring it toward her but to use it to lift herself to it. When she was close enough, she turned her face sideways and locked down on Mancini’s knuckles with her back teeth, where her jaw was the strongest and she could grind his skin without breaking it and risking getting his blood in her mouth. Mancini, caught off guard by this, shouted but still held on to the gun. He did nothing for a few seconds, his thoughts scrambled by the pain, and then he recovered and wound up to strike Barton with his free hand. A fist this time, not a palm strike. But before he could throw the punch, Spadaro, on his back, stomp-kicked Mancini with both feet, sending him sailing off Barton and onto the deck. His knuckles remained in Barton’s grip as his body landed and started to slide, pulling Barton with him a good foot or two. When they came to a stop—Mancini on his back, Barton on her stomach, holding on to Mancini’s hand not only with both her hands but with her teeth—Barton saw, lying on the shimmering planks between them, Mancini’s handgun.
She let go of him and lurched for it, grabbing it by the barrel, but Mancini was already on his feet and bolting up the short stairs. By the time Barton gripped the handle and was able to aim, Mancini was out of her line of sight, running, by the sound of his footsteps, toward the upper lot.
The train bridge.
Barton scrambled to her feet, looked down at Spadaro. He was curled up in pain, his head bleeding from several cuts.
“Ricky, you okay?”
“He parked across the canal,” Spadaro gasped. “Behind the Water’s Edge. I watched him walk across the bridge.” He found her eyes, held them. “He’s going after Tommy, Kay. You have to stop him.”
Barton hesitated, was unable, for a second, to move or even, for that matter, breathe.
“Go, Kay,” Spadaro urged. “Go.”
She looked at him once more, then stood and, Mancini’s gun in her hand, took the stairs two at time. Running across the packed mud and broken shells of the lower lot towar
d the upper one, she could see Mancini ahead, watched him cross the threshold where the light from the canal no longer had any influence and the blackness of a clouded night erased all details. After that she had only the vaguest sense of Mancini, saw only a lone figure moving as silently as a shadow through a dark place.
Barton reached the top of the incline and stepped onto the tracks as Mancini was closing in on the halfway point of the bridge. She wasted no time, continued after him even though she was already winded from the uphill run. So slight, so weak. Covering the distance of several feet, she was suddenly out over the choppy black water, felt a real sense of disorientation because of this drastic shift in perspective. Up in the air, suddenly, wind rushing past her, water rushing below her. She looked down at her feet as she ran, to help her adjust to the change from softened dirt and crushed shells to the wooden ties that were spaced too close together with brief patches of loose gravel placed evenly between them. She was afraid now of stumbling, almost preoccupied by that possibility, felt her pace falter as doubt caused her to slow. The train tracks were themselves wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder, and the gridwork of the trestle’s frame complex enough to serve as a railing, so it wasn’t a matter of fearing that she might fall from the bridge itself and into the dangerous water below, more a fear of tripping and taking a bad spill onto the hard ties and gravel. If she did that, Mancini would no doubt get away—even if she didn’t fall, even if she kept her footing and continued to run with everything she had, he could still get away. As out of shape as he may have been, it was nothing compared to her condition, so what hope, really, did she have of catching the man, and what exactly would she do if she caught him?
For several crucial seconds, she looked not at the man she was pursuing but down at the threatening terrain beneath her feet. When she finally did look up again, expecting to see Mancini pulling away even farther, or maybe already off the bridge by now, she saw instead that he had in fact stopped, was standing not all that far from where he had been when she last looked at him. His right side facing her and his left hand out of sight, there was less than twenty feet between them now and nothing around them but the cold and deafening air. Barton, too, stopped, or began to, realizing quickly that Mancini was in mid-turn, that his left hand, unseen till this very second, was holding Spadaro’s gun. As Mancini was completing his quick turn, facing Barton almost full-out now, he raised his left hand, was just a second, maybe less than that, from taking aim and firing.
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