City Of Lies (48 page)

Freiberg shook his head. ‘It is not easy to determine where your loyalties lie, John.’

‘My loyalties?’

‘Yes, your loyalties. A loyalty to family, or a loyalty to the law.’

Harper laughed sharply. ‘This is so manipulative, and not even inventive manipulation. Jesus Christ, Walt, give me some fucking credit will you? Who the hell d’you think I am, eh? You want something, you ask me, okay? You need something from me then tell me what you need and I’ll tell you whether or not I’m prepared to give it. It isn’t complicated, Walt, it really isn’t this fucking complicated.’

Cathy leaned forward. ‘Tell him, Walt . . . tell him what’s going on. If he doesn’t understand then he can’t help.’

Freiberg nodded. He looked at Harper, then at Cathy, then at Harper once more. ‘I will tell you what you need to know,’ he said quietly. He waited for some word, some reaction from Harper, but there was nothing. ‘And I will tell you what we need from you. You will not have time to think about it, John – at least not a great deal of time – and if you decide not to help us then we will have to act regardless.’

‘Cut to the chase, Walt. Enough of this,’ Harper said.

‘Day after tomorrow,’ Cathy Hollander interjected.

‘The day after tomorrow, Christmas Eve, we take some actions,’ Walt said. ‘What those actions are you do not need to know. They are things that were arranged by your father, and have been organized for a considerable time. They involve both myself, the people who work for Edward, and also a number of people in the employ of Ben Marcus. We are, in effect,
collaborating in a series of actions that will realize a considerable return—’

‘You’re going to hit some places, right?’ Harper said. ‘What are they? Banks? Finance houses? Diamond cutters?’

‘The first thing,’ Freiberg said.

‘Banks . . . you’re going to hit some banks, and you guys are going to work with Marcus’s people. That’s what you’re telling me?’ Harper looked at Cathy. She nodded in the affirmative.

‘And I have something to do with this. You want me to be a getaway driver, right?’

Walt Freiberg laughed. ‘No, John, we do not wish for you to be a getaway driver.’

‘Then what? Tell me what you want.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Freiberg said, ‘there is a meeting. That meeting was supposed to take place between your father and Ben Marcus. Your father cannot be there for obvious reasons, and so I am going to take his place.’

Harper was silent for a few seconds. He looked at Cathy, then looked once more at Freiberg.

‘I will be there to stand for your father, to speak for him, to agree to the terms of a sale.’

‘A sale? A sale of what?’

‘Your father’s territory,’ Freiberg said matter-of-factly.

Harper frowned. ‘How the—’

Freiberg raised his hand. ‘Your father made an agreement with Ben Marcus. He wanted to retire, had considered it for some time, but he did not wish to go away with nothing to show for the work he had done and the territory he owned. He spoke with Ben Marcus, and between them they agreed that Edward would sell his interests in his New York territory. They agreed a price—’

‘And after the agreement was made Ben Marcus had my father shot so he wouldn’t have to pay the money,’ Harper interjected.

Freiberg nodded. ‘We think so. Edward had already started letting some of his people go. He’d started to settle old debts for his friends, gave money to people and helped them move out of New York. He was closing up the empire if you like. It was something he was ready to do, and I was not averse to the idea. To a degree, the fact that some of his affairs and relationships were being concluded put him in a vulnerable position. Once he’d made his agreement with Marcus we believed everything
would roll forward, but there was a suspicion that Marcus might renege on the deal – and I suspected there might be an attempt on your father’s life—’

‘And yet he continued to do the same things, to follow the same routines?’ Harper asked.

Freiberg smiled. ‘Like I said before, Edward was not a frightened man. He figured Marcus wasn’t ballsy enough to do what he did, but he was wrong, and we were faced with the reality of no deal, no Edward, and Marcus in a very strong position due to the fact that some of our people had already left New York and could not be recalled. I had to make a decision John . . . I had to do whatever was necessary to ensure that your father’s interests were taken care of.’

‘So you had Evelyn call me.’

Freiberg nodded. ‘And then I spoke with Marcus directly, told him that in the absence of Edward I would stand as his representative, but that you were also here to ensure that your father’s interests were correctly managed. For Marcus to disagree with such a proposal would have implicated him in the attempt on Edward’s life. He had to agree. To have done anything else would have demonstrated that he never intended to keep his word in the first place.’

‘And tomorrow?’

Cathy Hollander cleared her throat. ‘Tomorrow Walt will meet with Ben Marcus and agree to the terms of the sale.’

‘Which are?’

‘Complete and unconditional surrender of all territorial partnerships, properties, resources, outstanding collections. Basically, everything that Edward owned, everything that was owed to him, becomes Marcus’s property. Aside from some small bookmaker’s traffic and a couple of loansharks owned by an Italian family, everything in this territory that belonged to Edward will belong to Ben Marcus.’

Harper nodded. He did not demonstrate any reaction to what he was being told. Inside his chest his heart thundered like a freight train. His hands were sweating, his pulse raced. ‘And the price?’

There was silence in the room, just for a few seconds, but that silence was tangible and intense.

‘The price,’ Freiberg echoed, ‘will be seven and a half million dollars.’

Harper looked up at Freiberg, his eyes wide, disbelieving. ‘And this money . . . it comes from—’

‘The actions we do on Christmas Eve,’ Cathy Hollander said. ‘That’s where it will come from, and that’s why we are working with Marcus’s people for the first time.’

‘You have to steal the buy-off money?’

Freiberg smiled. ‘Ben Marcus doesn’t have seven and a half million dollars, John. Nevertheless Ben Marcus has the contacts and resources necessary to take a lot more than seven and a half million dollars in one day.’

‘And how many banks are you going to hit?’

Freiberg shook his head. ‘That,’ he said quietly, ‘is a detail you don’t need to know.’ He paused. ‘However, there is something you do need to know.’ He glanced at Cathy. ‘Ben Marcus is not a stupid man. Quite the contrary. A certain degree of license has been employed . . . creative license if you like. Ben Marcus has been told that you are a player of some influence.’

Harper looked up.

‘He has been told that you have been employed in the same line of work as your father. He has been led to believe that there is a possibility that you might have your own crew down in Miami—’

Harper laughed suddenly, awkwardly. ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

‘No, I’m not kidding. This was the only way he could be convinced to carry through with his agreement. He has been told, by inference, by lack of words rather than anything direct, that you have your own people down south, that you’ve come here to New York to make sure your father’s territory isn’t threatened. He thinks there’s a chance you might take some direct action against him if things don’t go the way your father intended.’

‘Jesus Christ, I don’t fucking believe this! You’re setting me up . . . putting me in a situation where I have to pretend—’

Freiberg shook his head. ‘You cannot
pretend
to be anything John, you have to
be
your father’s son, nothing more nor less than that.’

Harper turned and looked at Cathy. Her expression was implacable.

‘But, as I said, Ben Marcus is no fool. He will have made enquiries. He’ll have asked his people to check up on you. Fact is . . . well, fact is that he may already have figured out that you’re not who we’ve told him you are.’

‘And where does that put me? He’s going to find out I’m not what you’ve told him . . . Jesus Christ, Walt, he’s gonna send someone over here to kill me—’

Freiberg didn’t speak. He merely looked steadily back at Harper.

Harper could not look at Freiberg, or at Cathy Hollander. He tried not to think, tried not to show any emotion. He held a glass in his hand and swirled the whisky in it, looking down and watching as his own reflection was caught in a whirlpool and distorted. It seemed disconcertingly analogous to the situation in which he now found himself. Where was Miami, Florida? Where was Harry Ivens and the
Herald
? Where were the weather reports and small-time news stories about fishing trips and shark tournaments and hurricane warnings? Whatever life he’d imagined was his was gone. Nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing
could
be the same again no matter how hard he might try.

‘John?’

Harper turned. Cathy was looking at him, her expression allowing some sense of concern.

He shook his head; he was not ready to speak.

A minute passed, perhaps two, and then Harper looked up at Freiberg. ‘Okay,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve put me in a situation where my life is now in serious fucking danger.’

He paused, looked at Cathy, then back at Freiberg. ‘I want to know what’s in it for me.’

‘Who?’

‘Sonnenburg and Sampson.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Captain McLuhan said. He turned to the window, his head bowed, his hands on his hips.

‘Sampson is sedated,’ Sergeant Oates told him. ‘Guy flipped out . . . you know Sonnenburg was due to be married?’

‘Aw fuck, no . . . don’t tell me that.’ McLuhan walked back to his chair and seemed to fold down into it. ‘They didn’t have back-up?’

Oates raised an eyebrow and looked at McLuhan.

McLuhan raised his hand. ‘Don’t tell me . . . don’t want you to answer that question. Jesus Christ, my ass is in a sling now.’

‘They did call in for back-up but there was no-one available.’

‘And what were they after?’

‘Following up on the Jimmy Nestor thing.’

‘What did they find?’

‘Nestor’s chop-shop and Nestor’s cousin, a guy called Jesus Fernando. He was the one that shot Sonnenburg.’

‘And he’s dead?’

Oates nodded. ‘Yeah, he’s dead as well.’

‘Who shot him?’

‘As far as we can tell it was Sonnenburg . . . preliminary indications suggest they shot one another simultaneously.’

‘And the girl?’

Oates frowned. ‘What girl?’

‘The fucking girl he was going to marry . . . what girl d’you think I mean?’

‘Sampson told her . . . he called her and told her that Yale was killed.’

‘And she’s here?’

‘No, she’s not here, she’s with her family.’

McLuhan inhaled deeply and leaned forward, elbows on the edge of the table, face in his hands. ‘Thank Christ for small mercies . . . last thing I need down here is a hysterical Jewish police widow shrieking like a fire siren.’

‘Whaddya want me to do now?’ Oates asked.

‘Was there anything significant down there? This chop-shop of Jimmy Nestor’s?’

Oates shook his head. ‘Doesn’t seem to have been. We’re checking it out. And we still don’t really have anything significant from Jimmy Nestor’s autopsy.’

‘Go,’ McLuhan said. ‘Leave me alone for a little while. I have to think how the hell I’m going to answer up on this no back-up situation.’

‘Hey, they turned down the money, Captain. There were guys willing to do the overtime but there was no money—’

McLuhan silenced Oates with a gesture. ‘Sergeant, you’re a great sergeant. I couldn’t ask for a better duty sergeant. What you are not, however, is a public relations representative for the mayor’s office. I get called to account on this thing, the last thing in the world anyone is going to want to hear is that it’s down to the money they wouldn’t give us. Fair it may not be, but nothing in this world seems fair to me right now. Let me sort this thing out myself. You get some people on the Nestor thing, see if there isn’t something you can turn up at this shop of his. Follow up on the cousin . . . and get whoever is dealing with Jimmy Nestor’s murder investigation to make some progress, eh? At least if I go there with something the heat will be less.’

‘Sure thing, Captain.’

After a while she would become insensate and numb to all of it.

Evelyn Sawyer had forced herself to believe this.

The truth was different; very different indeed.

The truth? That was an irony and a contradiction in terms. Her life had been a lie, perhaps right from the beginning. Herself and Anne, herself and Garrett, herself and John Harper – the illegitimate nephew. And then there had been Edward, Walt Freiberg, the collection of criminals and thieves they had gathered around themselves; and all the while the threats, the broken promises, the words given which meant nothing at all. Everything had gone to shit. Wasn’t that the truth?

And time, the great healer? The great charlatan perhaps . . .

Time had merely been the ground from which the darkest aspects of her own bitter anger and hate had grown. Her life could have been something.
Could
have been. Had she not forever been there behind Anne, beside Garrett, standing ahead of John Harper in an effort to soften the blows that the world landed on them.

How had she managed to fool herself for so long? How had she believed that she would keep him away from Edward Bernstein for ever? How stupid could she have been?

Mid-afternoon, the sky clear, the last stripes of snow still clinging to the edges of the sidewalk, the rims of storm drains, the eaves of buildings. Evelyn Sawyer stood at the bottom of the stairwell and looked up towards the landing.

A coolness seemed to fill the house, as if each room had been empty for years – maintained as it had been left, but nevertheless empty. Like the soul had gone.

She started up the stairs, paused on the third riser as if to catch her breath, as if the pressure she felt was almost too intense for her to walk through. She was still for some seconds, and then moved once again.