The Wrong Man

by John Katzenbach

  No one did. A little disappointed, he crossed the room and walked out onto the street. Night had descended, and a cold chill touched his face. It did nothing to cool his imagination. He could picture himself looming over Ashley, thrusting at her, penetrating her, using every inch, every crevice, every space on the body for his own pleasure. He could hear her responding, and to him there was little difference between moans and cries of desire, and sobs of pain. Love and hurt. A caress and a blow. They were all the same.

  Despite the cold, he undid his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, letting the cool air slide over him as he marched along, head back, gulping in huge breaths. The chill did little to erase his desires. Love is like a disease, he thought to himself. Ashley was a virus that coursed along unchecked in his veins. He understood in that second that she would never leave him alone. Not for a single waking second, for the rest of his life. He walked on, thinking that the only way to control his love for Ashley was to control Ashley. Nothing had ever seemed so clear to him before.

  Michael O’Connell rounded the corner to the block to his apartment, his mind churning with images of lust and blood, all mingling together in a great dangerous stew, and not paying quite the attention that he should have paid when he heard a low voice behind him.

  “Let’s go have a little talk, O’Connell.” An iron-hard grip seized him by his upper arm.

  Matthew Murphy had easily spotted O’Connell as he passed beneath the glow of a streetlamp. It had been a simple matter to sweep out of his shadow and come up behind him. Murphy had been trained in these techniques, and all his instincts over twenty-five years of police work told him that O’Connell was a novice at true criminality.

  “Who the hell are you?” O’Connell stammered.

  “I’m your biggest fucking nightmare, asshole. Now open up the door and let’s go up to your place nice and quiet like, so I can explain the world and the way it works to you in a civilized manner, without beating the shit out of you or far worse. You don’t want worse, do you, O’Connell? What do your friends call you? OC? Or maybe just plain Mike? What is it?”

  O’Connell started to twist, which only made the pressure on his arm tighten, and he stopped. Before he could answer, Murphy thrust another rapid series of questions at him.

  “Maybe Michael O’Connell doesn’t have any friends, so no nickname. So, tell you what, Mike-y boy, I’ll just make it up as we go along. Because, trust me, you want me to be your friend. You want that more than you’ve ever wanted anything in this world. Right now, Mike-y boy, that’s your absolute, top, number-one need on this planet: making sure that I remain your friend. Do you get that?”

  O’Connell grunted, trying to turn enough to get a good look at Murphy, but the onetime trooper stayed right behind him, leaning in, whispering into his ear, while all the time keeping a steady pressure on his arm and in the small of his back, pushing him forward.

  “Inside. Up the stairs. Your place, Mike-y boy. So we can have our little chat in private.”

  Half-pushed, half-forced, O’Connell was steered through the entranceway and up to the second floor by the constant pressure from Matthew Murphy, who kept up a cold, mocking banter with each step.

  Murphy increased his grip, squeezing at the muscle as they reached O’Connell’s door, and he could feel O’Connell react to the sharp pain. “That’s another thing about being friends, Mike-y boy. You don’t want me angry. You just don’t want me losing me temper. Might force me to do something you’d later regret, if you had a later in which to regret it, which I would sincerely doubt. You understand? Now open your door slowly.”

  As O’Connell managed to get the key out of his pocket and into the lock, Murphy looked down the hallway and saw the neighboring old lady’s cat collection scurrying about. One even arched its back and hissed in O’Connell’s direction.

  “Not too popular with the locals, are you, Mike-y boy?” Murphy said, twisting the younger man’s arm again. “You got something against cats? They got something against you?”

  “We don’t get along,” O’Connell grunted.

  “I’m not surprised.” Murphy gave the younger man a vicious shove, sending him stumbling ahead into the apartment. O’Connell tripped over a thread-bare rug on the floor, sprawling forward, thudding hard into a wall, twisting around to try to get his first real look at Murphy.

  But the detective was on top of him with surprising quickness for a middle-aged man, looming over O’Connell like a gargoyle hanging from a medieval church, his face set in a half-mocking grin, but his eyes wearing a look of harsh anger. O’Connell scrambled to rise at least to a half-sitting position, and he stared up at Murphy, locking his eyes on the ex-detective’s.

  “Not too happy, are you, Mike-y boy? Not accustomed to being tossed around, are you?”

  O’Connell didn’t reply. He was still assessing the situation, and he knew enough to keep his mouth shut.

  Murphy took that moment to slowly pull back his suit coat, revealing the .380 in its shoulder harness. “I brought a friend, Mike-y boy. As you can see.”

  The younger man grunted again, shifting his eyes between the weapon and the private investigator. Murphy swiftly reached inside his jacket and removed the automatic. He had not been intending to do this, but something in O’Connell’s defiant stare told him to accelerate the process. With a rapid movement, he chambered a round and rested his thumb up against the safety catch. Slowly, he moved the pistol down toward O’Connell, until he finally rested the barrel up against the younger man’s forehead, directly between the eyes.

  “Fuck you,” O’Connell said.

  Murphy tapped the gun barrel against O’Connell’s nose. Just hard enough so it would hurt, not hard enough to break anything. “Poor choice of words,” Murphy said. With his left hand, he reached down and grasped O’Connell’s cheeks, pinching them between his fingers, squeezing tightly. “And I thought we were going to be friends.”

  O’Connell continued to stare at the ex-detective, and Murphy abruptly slammed his head back against the wall. “A little more politeness,” he said coldly. “A little more civility. Makes everything go much smoother.” Then he reached down, grabbed O’Connell’s jacket, and lifted him up, keeping the handgun firmly planted on O’Connell’s forehead. Murphy maneuvered the younger man into a chair, half-tossing him so that O’Connell crashed back, the chair lifting on its back legs, and he had to struggle to keep his balance. “I haven’t even really been bad, yet, Mike-y boy. Not at all. We’re still just getting to know one another.”

  “You’re not a cop, are you?”

  “You know cops, do you, Mike-y boy? You’ve sat across from a cop more than once or twice, haven’t you?”

  O’Connell nodded.

  “Well, you’re absolutely fucking one hundred percent correct,” Murphy said, smiling. He had known this question was coming. “You should wish I was a cop. I mean, you should be praying right now to whatever God it is that you think might just listen to you, praying, ‘Please, Lord, let him be a cop,’ because cops, they’ve got rules, Mike-y boy. Rules and regulations. Nope. Not me. I’m a lot more trouble than that. Much worse. Much much worse. I’m a private investigator.”

  O’Connell sneered, and Murphy slapped him hard across the face. The sound of his palm striking O’Connell’s cheek resounded through the small apartment.

  Murphy smiled. “I shouldn’t have to explain these things to you, not someone who thinks he knows his way around like you do, Mike-y boy. But, just for the sakes of our little discussion this evening, let me explain a few items. One, I was a cop. Put in more than twenty years fucking with folks a whole lot tougher than you. Most of those tough guys are sitting in stir, cursing my name. Or else they’re real dead, and not thinking too much about yours truly because they probably have much more significant problems in the hereafter. Two, I am duly licensed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States federal government and fully authorized to carry this weapon. Now, you know what those two littl
e things add up to?”

  O’Connell didn’t reply, and Murphy slapped him again.

  “Shit!” The word burst out of O’Connell’s lips.

  “When I ask you a question, Mike-y boy, please respond.”

  Murphy pulled back his hand again, and O’Connell said, “I don’t know. What do they add up to?”

  Murphy grinned. “What it means is that I’ve got friends—real friends, not like our little play friendship here tonight, Mike-y boy, but real friends who owe me all sorts of real favors, whose butts I might just have pulled out of one fire or another over all those years and would be more than willing to do absolutely fucking anything for me, and who are gonna believe everything I say about our little get-together here tonight if it comes to that. They aren’t going to give a damn about a punk like you, no matter what happens. And when I tell them that you came at me with a knife or just about any sort of weapon that I can plant in your dead and lifeless hand, and I tell ’em it was just some damn tough luck, but I just had to blow your sorry little ass away, they’re going to believe me. In fact, Mike-y boy, they’re gonna congratulate me for cleaning up this world a little bit, before you had a chance to make any really big trouble. They’ll file it away under preventative maintenance. So, that’s the situation you’re currently in, Mike-y boy. In other words, I can do just about anything I fucking well want to, and you can’t do a thing. Is that clear?”

  O’Connell hesitated, then nodded when he caught sight of Murphy pulling back his hand for another slap.

  “Good. Understanding, they say, is the path to enlightenment.”

  O’Connell could taste a little blood on his lips.

  “Let me just repeat this so that we are completely clear: I am free to do anything I might think right, including send your sorry little life straight to kingdom come or more likely hell. You get this, Mike-y boy?”

  “I get the picture.”

  Murphy started to walk around the chair. He kept the barrel of the automatic in contact with O’Connell’s skin, occasionally tapping it painfully against his head, or digging it into the soft space between O’Connell’s neck and his shoulders.

  “This is a really crummy place you’ve got here, Mike-y boy. Pretty rundown. Dirty.” Murphy stared across the room and saw a laptop computer on a table, making a mental note to take a handful of O’Connell’s backup discs with him.

  So far, things were going more or less as Murphy had anticipated. O’Connell was as predicted. He could sense the younger man’s discomfort, knew that the insistent rapping of the weapon against his head was creating indecision and doubt. In all moments of confrontation, Murphy thought, at some point the skilled interrogator simply takes over the subject’s identity, controlling, steering him to compliance. We’re on track, Murphy thought to himself. We’re definitely making progress.

  “Not much of a life, is it, Mike-y boy? I mean, I’m not seeing much of a future here.”

  “It suits me.”

  “Yes. But what is it about this that makes you think for a single second that Ashley Freeman would want to be a part of it?”

  O’Connell remained quiet, and Murphy whacked him from behind with his free hand. “Answer the question, asshole.”

  “I love her. She loves me.”

  Murphy slapped him again. “I don’t think so, you low-life, bottom-dwelling slug.”

  A thin line of blood came from O’Connell’s ear.

  “She’s a class act, Mike-y boy. Unlike you, she’s got possibilities. She comes from fine folks, and she’s well educated and filled with all sorts of big-time potential. You, on the other hand, come from shit.” Murphy accentuated the last few words by smacking the younger man hard. “And you’re going to end up in shit. What? Prison? Or do you think you can manage to stay out?”

  “I’m okay. I haven’t broken any laws.”

  The repeated blows were taking effect. O’Connell’s voice cracked slightly, and Murphy thought he could hear a little quaver behind the words.

  “Really? You want me looking at you any closer?”

  Murphy had come full circle, and once again he tapped the gun barrel against the bridge of O’Connell’s nose, demanding a response.

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  He grabbed O’Connell’s chin and twisted it painfully. He could see some tears in the corners of the younger man’s eyes. “But, Mike-y, don’t you think you ought to be asking me a little more politely to stay out of your life?”

  “Please stay out of my life,” O’Connell said slowly and quietly.

  “Well, I’d like to. I’d genuinely like to. So, Mike-y boy, just looking at it all, objective-like, don’t you think it would be a really, really good thing for you to absolutely make sure that I’m not in your life anymore? That this little get-together, friendly as it might be, is the absolute last time you and I ever see each other? Right?”

  “Right.” O’Connell wasn’t sure which question to answer, but he was sure that he didn’t want to be hit again. And while he didn’t think that the man in front of him would shoot him, he wasn’t totally sure.

  “I need to be persuaded, don’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  Murphy smiled. Then he patted O’Connell on the head. “Just so we truly understand each other, what we’re doing here is negotiating our own private, special, one-on-one temporary restraining order. Just as if we’d gone to court. Except ours is fucking permanent, got it? I know you know what one of them means: stay away. No contact. But ours, because it is a special one, just between you and me, Mike-y boy, well, because ours isn’t any wimpy old sort of eminently forgettable piece of paper issued by some old-fart judge that you’re not gonna pay any attention to, ours comes with a real guarantee.”

  With the final word, Murphy slammed his fist into O’Connell’s cheek, sending him sprawling on the floor. Murphy was over him, automatic in hand, before the younger man had a chance even to collect his thoughts.

  “Maybe I should just stop fucking around and end this right now.” With an audible click, Murphy released the safety catch on the pistol with his thumb. He held up his left hand as if to shield himself from the blowback of brains and blood.

  “Give me a reason. One way or the other, Mike-y boy. But give me a reason to make a decision.”

  O’Connell tried to twist away from the gun barrel, but the ex-detective’s weight pinned him to the floor. “Please,” he suddenly pleaded, “please, I’ll stay away, I promise. I’ll leave her alone.”

  “Good start, asshole. Keep going.”

  “I’ll never have any contact whatsoever. She’s out of my life. I’ll stay away. What do you want me to say?”

  O’Connell was nearly sobbing. Each phrase seemed more pitiful than the last.

  “Let me think about it, Mike-y boy.”

  Murphy lowered his shielding hand and pulled his weapon back from O’Connell’s face.

  “Don’t move. I just want to look around.”

  He walked over to the cheap table where the computer rested. A handful of unmarked rewritable discs was spread about. Murphy grabbed them and slipped them into his coat pocket. Then he turned back toward the younger man, who remained on the floor. “This where you keep your Ashley file? This where you screw around with folks who are a whole lot better than you?”

  O’Connell simply nodded and Murphy smiled. “I don’t think so,” he said briskly. “Not anymore.” Then he smashed the butt of the pistol down onto the keyboard. “Whoops,” he said as the plastic splintered. Two more blows to the screen and the mouse pad left the machine in pieces.

  O’Connell simply watched, saying nothing. Using the barrel of the gun, Murphy poked at the shattered computer. “I think we’re just about finished, Mike-y boy.” He walked back across the room and stood above O’Connell. “I want you to remember something,” he said quickly.

  “What?” O’Connell’s eyes were filled, as Murphy expected them to be.

  “I can always find you.
I can always run you to ground, no matter what nasty little rathole you crawl into.”

  The younger man just nodded.

  Murphy looked closely at him, staring hard, searching his face for signs of defiance, signs of anything other than compliance. When he was persuaded that there were none, he smiled.

  “Good. You’ve learned a lot tonight, Mike-y boy. A real education. And it hasn’t been too bad, has it? I’ve pretty much enjoyed our little get-together. Almost fun, wouldn’t you say? No, probably you wouldn’t. But there’s just one last thing…”

  He suddenly bent over and dropped to his knees, once again pinning O’Connell to the floor. In the same movement, he abruptly shoved the barrel of the automatic into O’Connell’s mouth, feeling it smash against his teeth. He could see terror in the younger man’s eyes, exactly what he was looking for.

  “Bang,” he said quietly.

  Then he slowly removed the weapon from O’Connell’s mouth, rose, gave him a grin, then pivoted abruptly and exited.

  The cool night air hit Matthew Murphy in the face and he wanted to put his head back and laugh out loud. He replaced the .380 automatic in the shoulder holster, adjusted his coat so he would look presentable, and started off down the street, moving along rapidly, but not in any particular hurry, enjoying the darkness, the city, and the sensation of success. He was already calculating how long it would take him to drive back to Springfield and wondering whether he would get there in time to catch a late dinner. He took a few strides and started to hum to himself. He had been right. The opportunity to deal with a punk like O’Connell was worth the 10 percent discount he was going to give Sally Freeman-Richards. Now that wasn’t so damn hard, was it? he said to himself. He was delighted to remind himself that none of his old skills had dissipated, and he felt decidedly younger. First thing in the morning, he would do up a small report—leaving out the parts where the automatic had figured most prominently—and send it along to Sally, accompanied by his bill and his assessment that she would not have to worry about Michael O’Connell again. Murphy prided himself on knowing precisely what fear can do to the minds of weak people.