Gone for Good (23 page)

"Hey'Willieboy?"

The Ghost tried to meet my eye then, but my father leaned in the way of even his gaze. I put a hand on his shoulder as if to tell him I could handle it.

"What? "I said.

"You do know I was" again with the finger quotes "hospitalized again, don't you?"

"Yes," I said.

"I was a senior. You were a sophomore."

"I remember."

"I had only one visitor the whole time I was there. Do you know who it was?"

I nodded. The answer was Julie.

"Ironic, don't you think?"

"Did you kill her?" I asked.

"Only one of us here is to blame."

My father stepped back in the way. "That's enough," he said.

I slid to the side. "What do you mean?"

"You, Willie boy. I mean you."

I was confused. "What?"

"That's enough," my father said again.

"You were supposed to fight for her," the Ghost went on. "You were supposed to protect her."

The words, even coming from this lunatic, pierced my chest like an ice pick.

"Why are you here?" my father demanded.

"The truth, Mr. Klein? I'm not exactly sure."

"Leave my family alone. You want someone, you take me."

"No, sir, I don't want you." He considered my father, and I felt something cold coil in the pit of my belly. "I think I prefer you this way."

The Ghost gave a little wave good-bye then and stepped into the wooded area. We watched him move deeper into the brush, fading away until, like his nickname, he vanished. We stood there for another minute or two. I could hear my father's breathing, hollow and tinny, as if coming up from a deep cavern.

"Dad?"

But he had already started toward the path. "Let's go home, Will."

My father would not talk.

When we got back to the house, he headed up to his bedroom, the one he had shared with my mother for nearly forty years, and closed the door. There was so much coming at me now. I tried to sort through it, but it was too much. My brain threatened to shut down. And still I didn't know enough. Not yet anyway. I needed to learn more.

Sheila.

There was one more person who might be able to shed some light on the enigma that had been the love of my life. So I made my excuses, said my good-byes, and headed back into the city. I hopped on a subway and headed up to the Bronx. The skies had started to darken and the neighborhood was bad, but for once in my life, I was beyond being scared.

Before I even knocked, the door opened a crack, the chain in place. Tanya said, "He's asleep."

"I want to talk to you," I said.

"I have nothing to say."

"I saw you at the memorial service."

"Go away."

"Please," I said. "It's important."

Tanya sighed and took off the chain. I slipped inside. The dim lamp was on in the far corner, casting the faintest of glows. As I let my eyes wander over this most depressing place, I wondered if Tanya was not as much a prisoner here as Louis Castman. I faced her. She shrunk back as if my gaze had the ability to scald.

"How long do you plan on keeping him here?" I asked.

"I don't make plans," she replied.

Tanya did not offer me a seat. We both just stood there, facing each other. She crossed her arms and waited.

"Why did you come to the service?" I asked.

"I wanted to pay my respects."

"You knew Sheila?"

"Yes."

"You were friends?"

Tanya may have smiled. Her face was so mangled, the scars running jagged lines with her mouth, I couldn't be sure. "Not even close."

"Why did you come then?"

She cocked her head to the side. "You want to hear something weird?"

I was not sure how to respond, so I settled for a nod.

"That was the first time I've been out of this apartment in sixteen months."

I was not sure how to respond to that either, so I tried, "I'm glad you came."

Tanya looked at me skeptically. The room was silent save for her breathing. I don't know what was physically wrong with her, if it was connected to the brutal slashing or not, but every breath sounded as though her throat were a narrow straw with a few drops of liquid stuck inside.

I said, "Please tell me why you came."

"It's like I told you. I wanted to pay my respects." She paused. "And I thought I could help."

"Help?"

She looked at the door to Louis Castman's bedroom. I followed her gaze. "He told me why you came here. I thought maybe I could fill in some more of the pieces."

"What did he say?"

"That you were in love with Sheila." Tanya moved closer to the lamp. It was hard not to look away. She finally sat and gestured for me to do likewise. "Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Did you murder her?" Tanya asked.

The question startled me. "No."

She did not seem convinced.

"I don't understand," I said. "You came to help?"

"Yes."

"Then why did you run off?"

"You haven't figured that out?"

I shook my head.

She sat more like collapsed onto a chair. Her hands fell into her lap, and her body started rocking back and forth.

"Tanya?"

"I heard your name," she said.

"Pardon?"

"You asked why I ran off." She stopped rocking. "It was because I heard your name."

"I don't understand."

She looked at the door again. "Louis didn't know who you were. Neither did I not until I heard your name at the service, when Squares eulogized her. You're Will Klein."

"Yes."

"And" her voice grew soft now, so soft I had to lean forward to hear it "you're Ken's brother."

Silence.

"You knew my brother?"

"We met. A long time ago."

"How?"

"Through Sheila." She straightened her back and looked at me. It was odd. They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. That's nonsense. Tanya's eyes were normal. I saw no scars there, no hint of defect, no shade of her history or her torments. "Louis told you about a big-time gangster who got involved with Sheila."

"Yes."

"That was your brother."

I shook my head. I was about to protest further, but I held it back when I saw that she had more to say.

"Sheila never fit into this lifestyle. She was too ambitious. She and Ken found each other. He helped set her up at a fancy college in Connecticut, but that was more to sell drugs than anything else. Out here, you see guys slicing up each other's intestines for a spot on a street corner. But a fancy rich-kid school, if you could move in and control that, you could score an easy mint."

"And you're saying that my brother set this up?"

She started rocking again. "Are you seriously telling me you didn't know?"

"Yes."

"I thought " She stopped.

"What?"

She shook her head. "I don't know what I thought."

"Please," I said.

"It's just weird. First Sheila's with your brother. Now she pops up again with you. And you act like you don't know anything about it."

Again, I did not know how to respond. "So what happened to Sheila?"

"You'd know better than me."

"No, I mean back then. When she was up at this college."

"I never saw her after she left the life. I got a couple of calls, that's all. But those stopped too. But Ken was bad news. You and Squares, you seemed nice. Like maybe she found some good. But then when I heard your name…" She shrugged the thought away.

"Does the name Carly mean anything to you?" I asked.

"No. Should it?"

"Did you know that Sheila had a daughter?"

That got Tanya rocking again. Her voice was pained. "Oh God."

"You knew?"

She shook her head hard. "No."

I followed right up. "Do you know a Philip McGuane?"

Still shaking her head. "No."

"How about John Asselta? Or Julie Miller?"

"No," she said quickly. "I don't know any of these people." She stood now and spun away from me. "I had hoped she escaped," she said.

"She did," I said. "For a time."

I saw her shoulders slump. Her breathing seemed even more labored. "It should have ended better for her."

Tanya started toward the door then. I did not follow. I looked back to Louis Castman's room. Again I thought that there were two prisoners here. Tanya stopped. I could feel her eyes on me. I turned to her.

"There are surgeries," I said to her. "Squares knows people. We can help."

"No, thank you."

"You can't live on vengeance forever."

She tried a smile. "You think that's what this is about?" She pointed to her mutilated face. "You think I keep him here because of this?"

I was confused again.

Tanya shook her head. "He told you how he recruited Sheila?"

I nodded.

"He gives himself all the credit. He talks about his natty clothes and smooth lines. But most of the girls, even the ones fresh off the bus, they're afraid to go with a guy alone. So you see, what really made the difference was that Louis had a partner. A woman. To help close the sale. To lull the girls into feeling safe."

She waited. Her eyes were dry. A tremor began deep inside me and spread out. Tanya moved to the door. She opened it for me. I left and never went back.

There were two phone messages on my voice mail. The first was from Sheila's mother, Edna Rogers. Her tone was stiff and impersonal. The funeral would be in two days, she stated, at a chapel in Mason, Idaho. Mrs. Rogers gave me times and addresses and directions from Boise. I saved the message.

The second was from Yvonne Sterno. She said it was urgent that I call her right away. Her tone was one of barely restrained excitement. That made me uneasy. I wondered if she'd learned the true identity of Owen Enfield and if she had, would that be a positive or negative thing?

Yvonne answered on the first ring.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Got something big here, Will."

"I'm listening."

"We should have realized it earlier."

"What's that?"

"Put the pieces together. A guy with a pseudonym. The FBI's strong interest. All the secrecy. A small community in a quiet area. You with me?"

"Not really, no."

"Cripco was the key," she went on. "As I said, it's a dummy corporation. So I checked with a few sources. Truth is, they don't try to hide them that hard. The cover isn't that deep. The way they figure it, if someone spots the guy, they know or they don't know. They aren't going to do a big background check."

"Yvonne?" I said.

"What?"

"I don't have a clue what you're talking about."

"Cripco, the company who leased the house and the car, traces back to the United States marshal's office."

Once again I felt my head teeter and spin. I let it go and a bright hope surfaced in the dark, murky blur. "Wait a second," I said. "Are you saying that Owen Enfield is an undercover agent?"

"No, I don't think so. I mean, what would he be investigating at Stonepointe someone cheating at gin rummy?"

"What then?"

"The U.S. marshal not the FBI runs the witness protection program."

More confusion. "So you're saying that Owen Enfield…?"

"That the government was hiding him here, yeah. They gave him a new identity. The key, like I said before, is that they don't take the background that deep. A lot of people don't know that. Hell, sometimes they're even dumb about it. My source at the paper was telling me about this black drug dealer from Baltimore who they stuck in a lily-white suburb outside Chicago. A total screw up. That wasn't the case here, but if, say, Gotti were searching for Sammy the Bull, they'd either recognize him or not. They wouldn't bother checking his background to make sure. You know what I mean?"

"I think so."

"So the way I figure it, this Owen Enfield was bad news. Most of the guys in witness protection are. So he's in the program and for some reason he murders these two guys and runs off. The FBI doesn't want that out. Think how embarrassing it would be the government cuts a deal with a guy and then he goes on a murder spree? Bad press all the way around, you know what I mean?"

I didn't say anything.

"Will?"

"Yeah."

There was a pause. "You're holding out on me, aren't you?"

I thought about what to do.

"Come on," she said. "Back and forth, remember? I give, you give."

I don't know what I would have said if I would have told her that my brother and Owen Enfield were one and the same, if I would have concluded that publicizing this was better than keeping it in the dark but the decision was taken from me. I heard a click and then the phone went dead.

There was a sharp knock on the door.

"Federal officers. Open up now."

I recognized the voice. It belonged to Claudia Fisher. I reached for the knob, twisted it, and was nearly knocked over. Fisher burst in with a gun drawn. She told me to put my hands up. Her partner, Darryl Wilcox, was with her. They both looked pale, weary, and maybe even frightened.

"What the hell is this?" I said.

"Hands up now!"

I did as she asked. She took out her cuffs, and then, as though thinking better of it, she stopped. Her voice was suddenly soft. "You'll come without a hassle?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Then come on, let's go."

I did not argue. I did not call their bluff or demand a phone call or any of that. I did not even ask them where we were going. Such protestations at this delicate juncture would, I knew, be either superfluous or harmful.

Pistillo had warned me to stay away. He had gone so far as to have me arrested for a crime I did not commit. He'd promised to frame me if need be. And still I had not backed down. I wondered where I'd unearthed this new-found bravery and I realized that it was simply a matter of having nothing more to lose. Maybe that was what bravery always is being past the point of giving a rat's ass. Sheila and my mother were dead. My brother had been lost to me. You corner a man, even one as weak as this one, and you see the animal emerge.

We pulled up to a row of houses in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Everywhere I looked I saw the same thing: tidy lawns, overdone flower beds, rusted once-white furniture, hoses snaking through the grass attached to sprinklers that vacillated in a lazy haze. We approached a house no different from any other. Fisher tried the knob. It was unlocked. They led me through a room with a pink sofa and console TV. Photographs of two boys ran along the top of the console. The photos were in age order, starting with two infants. In the last one, the boys, both teenagers now, were formally dressed, each bussing a cheek of a woman I assumed was their mother.

The kitchen had a swing door. Pistillo sat at the Formica table with an iced tea. The woman in the photograph, the probable mother, stood by the sink. Fisher and

Wilcox made themselves scarce. I stayed standing.

"You have my phone tapped," I said.

Pistillo shook his head. "A tap just tells you where a call originated. What we're using here are listening devices. And just so we're clear, they were court ordered."

"What do you want from me?" I asked him.

"The same thing I've wanted for eleven years," he said. "Your brother."

The woman at the sink turned on the faucet. She rinsed out a glass. More photos, some with the woman, some with Pistillo and other youngsters but again mostly the same two boys, had been hung on the refrigerator by magnets. These were more recent and casual shots at the shore, in the yard, that kind of thing.

Pistillo said, "Maria?"

The woman shut off the water and turned toward him.

"Maria, this is Will Klein. Will, Maria."

The woman I assumed that this was Pistillo's wife dried her hands on a dish towel. Her grip was firm.

"Nice to meet you," she said a little too formally.

I mumbled and nodded, and when Pistillo signaled, I sat on a metal chair with vinyl padding.

"Would you like something to drink, Mr. Klein?" Maria asked me.

"No, thank you."

Pistillo raised his glass of iced tea. "Dynamite stuff. You should have a glass."

Maria kept hovering. I finally accepted the iced tea just so we could move on. She took her time pouring and putting the glass in front of me. I thanked her and tried a smile. She tried one back, but it flickered even weaker than mine.

She said, "I'll wait in the other room, Joe."

"Thanks, Maria."

She pushed through the swinging door.

"That's my sister," he said, still looking at the door she'd just gone through. He pointed to the snapshots on the refrigerator. "Those are her two boys. Vic Junior is eighteen now. Jack is sixteen."

"Uh-huh." I folded my hands and rested them on the table. "You've been listening in on my calls."

"Yes."

"Then you already know that I don't have a clue where my brother is."

He took a sip of the iced tea. "That I do." He was still staring at the refrigerator; he head-gestured for me to do likewise. "You notice anything missing from those pictures?"

"I'm really not in the mood for games, Pistillo."

"No, me neither. But take a longer look. What's missing?"

I did not bother to look because I already knew. "The father."

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me like a game show host. "Got it on the first try," he said. "Impressive."

"What the hell is this?"

"My sister lost her husband twelve years ago. The boys, well, you can do the math on your own. They were six and four. Maria raised them on her own. I pitched in where I could, but an uncle isn't a father, you know what I mean?"

I said nothing.

"His name was Victor Dober. That name mean anything to you?"

"No."

"Vic was murdered. Shot twice in the head execution-style." He drained his iced tea and then added, "Your brother was there."

My heart lurched inside my chest. Pistillo stood, not waiting for a reaction. "I know my bladder is going to regret this, Will, but I'm going to have another glass. You want anything while I'm up?"

I tried to work through the shock. "What do you mean, my brother was there?"

But Pistillo was taking his time now. He opened the freezer, took out an ice tray, broke it open in the sink. The cubes clattered against the ceramic. He fished some out with his hand and filled his glass. "Before we begin, I want you to make a promise."

"What?"

"It involves Katy Miller."

"What about her?"

"She's just a kid."

"I know that."

"This is a dangerous situation. You don't have to be a genius to figure that out. I don't want her getting hurt again."

"Neither do I."

"So we agree then," he said. "Promise me, Will. Promise me you won't involve her anymore."

I looked at him and I knew that point was not negotiable. "Okay," I said. "She's out."

He checked my face, looking for the lie, but on this point he was right. Katy had already paid a huge price. I'm not sure I could stand it if she was forced to pay a higher one.

"Tell me about my brother," I said.

He finished pouring the iced tea and settled back into his chair. He looked at the table and then raised his eyes. "You read in the paper about the big busts," Pistillo began. "You read about how the Fulton Fish Market's been cleaned up. You see the parade of old men doing the perp walk on the news, and you think, those days are over. The mob is gone. The cops have won."

He finished pouring the iced tea and sat back down. My own throat suddenly felt parched, sandy, as if it might close up altogether. I took a deep sip from my glass. The tea was too sweet.

"Do you know anything about Darwin?" he asked.

I thought the question was rhetorical, but he waited for an answer. I said, "Survival of the strongest, all that."

"Not the strongest," he said. "That's the modern interpretation, and it's wrong. The key for Darwin was not that the strongest survive the most adaptable do. See the difference?"

I nodded.

"So the smarter bad guys, they adapted. They moved their business out of Manhattan. They sold drugs, for example, in the less competitive burbs. For your basic corruption, they started feeding on the Jersey cities. Camden, for example. Three of the last five mayors have been convicted of crimes. Atlantic City, I mean, c'mon, you don't cross the street without graft. Newark and all that revitalization bullshit. Revitalization means money. Money means kickbacks and graft."

I shifted in my chair. "Is there a point to this, Pistillo?"

"Yeah, asshole, there's a big point." His face reddened. His features remained steady, though not without great effort. "My brother-in-law the father of those boys tried to clean the streets of these scumbags. He worked undercover. Someone found out. And he and his partner ended up dead."

"And you think my brother was involved in that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"You have proof?"

"Better than that." Pistillo smiled. "Your brother confessed."

I leaned back as if he'd taken a swing at me. I shook my head. Calm down. He would say and do anything, I reminded myself. Hadn't he been willing to frame me just last night?

"But we're getting ahead of ourselves, Will. And I don't want you to get the wrong idea. We don't think your brother killed anyone."

Another whiplash. "But you just said "

He held up a hand. "Hear me out, okay?"

Pistillo rose again. He needed time. I could see that. His face was surprisingly matter-of-fact, composed even, but that was because he was jamming the rage back in the closet. I wondered if that closet door would hold. I wondered how often, when he looked at his sister, that door gave way and the rage was let loose.

"Your brother worked for Philip McGuane. I assume you know who he is."

I was giving him nothing. "Go on."

"McGuane is more dangerous than your pal Asselta, mostly because he's smarter. The OCID considers him one of the top guns on the East Coast."

"OCID?"

"Organized Crime Investigation Division," he said. "At a young age, McGuane saw the writing on the wall. Talk about adapting, this guy is the ultimate survivor. I won't go into detail about the current state of organized crime the new Russians, the Triad, the Chinese, the old-world Italians. McGuane stayed two steps ahead of the competition. He was a boss by the time he was twenty-three. He works all the classics drugs, prostitution, loan-sharking but he specializes in graft and kickbacks and setting up his drug trade in less competitive spots away from the city."

I thought about what Tanya had said, about Sheila selling up at Haverton College.

"McGuane killed my brother-in-law and his partner, a guy named Curtis Angler. Your brother was involved. We arrested him but on lesser charges."

"When?"

"Six months before Julie Miller was murdered."

"How come I never heard anything about it?"

"Because Ken didn't tell you. And because we didn't want your brother. We wanted McGuane. So we flipped him."

"Flipped him?"

"We gave Ken immunity in exchange for his cooperation."

"You wanted him to testify against McGuane?"

"More than that. McGuane was careful. We didn't have enough to nail him on the murder indictment. We needed an informant. So we wired him up and sent him back in."

"You're saying that Ken worked undercover for you?"

Something flashed hard in Pistillo's eyes. "Don't glamorize it," he snapped. "Your low-life brother wasn't a law enforcement officer. He was just a scumbag trying to save his own skin."

I nodded, reminding myself yet again that this could all be a lie. "Go on," I said again.

He reached back and grabbed a cookie from the counter. He chewed slowly and washed it down with the iced tea. "We don't know what happened exactly. I can only give you our working theory."

"Okay."

"McGuane found out. You have to understand. McGuane is a brutal son of a bitch. Killing someone is always an option for him, you know, like deciding to take the Lincoln or Holland Tunnel. A matter of convenience, nothing more. He feels nothing."

I saw now where he was heading with this. "So if McGuane knew that Ken had become an informant "

"Dead meat," he finished for me. "Your brother understood the risk. We were keeping tabs, but one night he just ran off."

"Because McGuane found out?"

"That's what we think, yes. He ended up at your house. We don't know why. Our theory is that he thought it was a safe place to hide, mostly because McGuane would never suspect he'd put his family in danger."

"And then?"

"By now you must have guessed that Asselta was working for McGuane too."

"If you say so," I said.

He ignored that. "Asselta had a lot to lose here too. You mentioned Laura Emerson, the other sorority sister who was killed. Your brother told us that Asselta murdered her. She was strangled, which is Asselta's favorite method of execution. According to Ken, Laura Emerson had found out about the drug trade at Haverton and was set to report it."

I made a face. "And they killed her for that?"

"Yeah, they killed her for that. What do you think they'd do, buy her an ice cream? These are monsters, Will. Get that through your thick head."

I remembered Phil McGuane coming over and playing Risk. He always won. He was quiet and observant, the sort of kid who makes you wonder about still waters and all that. He was class president, I think. I was impressed by him. The Ghost had been openly psychotic. I could see him doing anything. But McGuane?

"Somehow they learned where your brother was hiding. Maybe the Ghost followed Julie home from college, we don't know. Either way, he catches up to your brother at the Miller house. Our theory is that he tried to kill them both. You said you saw someone that night. We believe you. We also believe that the man you saw was probably Asselta. His fingerprints were found at the scene. Ken was wounded in the assault that explains the blood but somehow he got away. The Ghost was left with the body of Julie Miller. So what would be the natural thing to do? Make it look like Ken did it. What better way to discredit him or even scare him away?"

He stopped and started nibbling on another cookie. He would not look at me. I knew that he could be lying, but his words had the ring of truth. I tried to calm myself, let what he was telling me sink in. I kept my eyes on him. He kept his gaze on the cookie. Now it was my turn to fight back the rage.

"So all this time" I stopped, swallowed, tried again "so all this time, you knew that Ken didn't kill Julie."

"No, not at all."

"But you just said "

"A theory, Will. It was just a theory. It's just as likely that he killed her."

"You don't believe that."

"Don't tell me what I believe."

"What could possibly be Ken's motive for killing Julie?"

"Your brother was a bad guy. Make no mistake about that."

"That's not a motive." I shook my head. "Why? If you knew Ken probably didn't kill her, why did you always insist he had?"

He chose not to reply. But maybe he didn't have to. The answer was suddenly obvious. I glanced at the snapshots on the refrigerator. They explained so much.

"Because you wanted Ken back at any cost," I said, answering my own question. "Ken was the only one who could give you McGuane. If he was hiding as a material witness, the world wouldn't really care. There would be no press coverage. There would be no major manhunt. But if Ken murdered a young woman in her family basement the story of suburbia gone wrong the media attention would be massive. And those headlines, you figured, would make it harder for him to hide."