The Betrayer (5 page)

Cat Coyle was awake, though
barely. She had gone to bed late, only to struggle to find sleep, but once she
did, she descended quickly into violent and vivid dreams — end-of-the-world nonsense,
she the only being left alive and condemned to roam alone through a decaying New
York City. Around four a.m. she’d had enough of that and switched on the white-noise
machine sitting on her nightstand. She was lying still and listening to ocean
waves endlessly crashing, letting her thoughts drift freely and making no
attempt to hold on to any of them, when her cell phone rang.

The ringtone
was “Message in a Bottle” by The Police, her favorite band since she was a
child. The number displayed on her phone’s screen belonged to Donnie Fiermonte
— his cell number, though, not his office number. Cat’s first instinct was to
ignore the call; if he were looking to give her good news, he would have no
doubt waited for a more decent hour, so whatever this was, whatever he needed
to tell her now, it had to be bad.

Also, there was
the chance that Fiermonte wanted to follow up on the conversation they’d had
over after-work drinks a week ago. His marriage was over, he’d told her, he
would be moving out soon, and he wanted — needed — to confess the feelings — strong
feelings — he had for her. He was twenty-plus years older than she, he was like
family, she’d known him all her life — these were just a few of the reasons
why, he said, he knew he shouldn’t be telling her what he was telling her. But he
felt it was time that she knew — apparently he’d been feeling this way for a
while. She’d told him that she was flattered, and that she probably had
feelings, too, which maybe was true, but they both knew she was a mess these
days, and maybe when he was officially moved out, when papers were filed, and
enough time had passed, they could talk about it then. It had seemed the thing
to say. After finishing their drinks and parting ways with a handshake, Cat
promptly headed from that bar in downtown Manhattan to another not far from her
Long Island City apartment. There she met a man and, after a few hours of
drinking and talking, she brought him back to her place. He turned out to be a
mediocre lover — too tentative, unwilling to look her in the eye, and less than
eager to kiss — but she was used to men like that and knew how to take over. The
best thing she could say about him was that he had the common sense to be long
gone when she woke the next morning.

So whether this
call would turn out to be another confession to feelings she couldn’t live up
to, or some other kind of bad news, Cat knew there was no point in avoiding it.
Fiermonte would probably worry when she didn’t answer and try back. And anyway,
she was up.

Answering, she
said flatly, “What’s up, Donnie?”

“Sorry if I
woke you, Cat.”

“You didn’t.”

“Listen, I need
you to meet me right away. Can you do that?”

She tried to
read his tone but couldn’t. Sitting up, she moved to the edge of her bed. The
sheets were twisted from her troubled sleep, her right ankle caught in a
devious tangle. She felt a little like an animal in a trap and kicked until she
was free. “Why?”

“I’m outside
the Delancey Bar and Grille. You should get here as soon as you can.”

She detected
something in his voice now. Something grave. And then there was the fact that
he didn’t actually answer her question. “What’s going on, Donnie?”

“Not over the
phone.”

“Seriously?”
You’re
really going to leave me hanging like this?
was what she meant. Her tone
conveyed that clearly enough.

“Just get here,
Cat. Okay? As soon as you can.”

She drew a short
breath, let it out. She liked to think she knew when to stand her ground and
when to surrender. It seemed, though, that surrender was more often than not
the route to take. Or at least the easier one.

“Yeah, okay. I’m
on my way.”

***

The Delancey Bar and Grille was located
near the foot of the long entrance ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge, which
connected Manhattan and Brooklyn. Two police units with their lights flashing blocked
off the north side of the wide street, one at Clinton Street and the other at
Attorney Street. Cat, in her ten-year-old Mustang, was approaching the cop at
Clinton and reaching for her identification when he waved her through. Fiermonte
must have instructed the officer to look out for her.

Cat spotted
Fiermonte a hundred or so feet away, talking with a male detective. The
detective was pointing to what was obviously the topic of their discussion — a
crashed motorcycle. Fiermonte, nodding at something the man was saying, looked
up and saw the Mustang. He immediately excused himself and stepped away,
gesturing toward where he wanted Cat to park — a good distance, she noted, from
where the motorcycle lay. She got the sense that Fiermonte, in a protective
way, was putting distance between her and it.

She pulled the
Mustang to the curb and got out. She was dressed in dark slacks, dress shoes,
and a white shirt, a light Windbreaker over that. Her Glock was holstered to her
belt, her badge on a chain hanging around her neck.

Fiermonte
crossed the distance between them quickly. He was tall, athletically built, had
always struck her, even when she was just a girl, even before she understood
such things, as a vital man. Just as her father had been. Fiermonte had steady
blue eyes — he looked at you when he talked to you as if you might be lying — and
dark hair that had recently begun to gray. He was a man making that transition
into distinguished, and doing so with ease.

Cat looked past
him and toward the motorcycle — or tried to; the detective had moved around the
bike and was now standing in her line of sight, his back to her. Cat scanned the
scene, taking quick note of the vehicles gathered there. Fiermonte’s sedan, the
detective’s sedan, and the two patrol units. What she didn’t see was an
ambulance.

Fiermonte reached
her and said, “Thanks for coming, Cat.”

Being an assistant
federal prosecutor, his presence at a crime scene wasn’t an entirely unheard-of
thing. What Cat didn’t understand was why he had called her. For the past year
she had worked in the FBI’s Cyber Crimes Division, had nothing at all to do
with crime scene investigations, hadn’t for a while now. Her career path, in
fact, was taking her further and further from fieldwork and closer and closer
to administrative. Maybe “career” wasn’t even the right word; maybe “careen”
would be better. She hadn’t really fought the pull toward administration,
though; she’d long ago lost the love she once had for the job, and for the
Bureau itself. She’d lost the ambition to rise within it, as well.

Of course,
having the last name of Coyle didn’t help matters any.

How far,
really, could the daughter of a “traitor” expect to go?

“We’ve got a
bit of a situation here,” Fiermonte said.

“I see that.”

He paused,
then: “When’s the last time you spoke with your brother?”

“Johnny?”

“No. Jeremy.”

She felt her
gut tighten and looked again toward the crashed motorcycle. The detective had
crouched down, so she still couldn’t get a good look at it. “I don’t know. A
while, I guess.”

“How long is a
while?”

“Six months,
maybe. Christmas, I think. What’s happened, Donnie?”

“There was an
altercation here a few hours ago. The pieces are still being put together.”

The thought
occurred to her then that the ambulance — or coroner’s wagon, for that matter —
could have already come and gone. “Does that bike belong to Jeremy?”

“It’s
registered to him, yes.”

“Is he dead?”

“No. Not that
we know of, anyway.”

She thought
about that. Would it be terrible for her to admit that if he were dead, she would
feel, mixed in with real grief, some degree of relief? Her kid brother — ten
years younger than she — seemed to have been born to suffer. And to cause
suffering. He had so excelled at both.

“He was living
in our father’s old apartment,” she offered.

Fiermonte was
watching her closely. He nodded. “That was the address on the registration. The
detective sent a unit there an hour ago but no one answered.”

“I have a key
on me. I could let the detective in. We wouldn’t have to wait around for a
warrant.”

“We’ll keep
that between us for now.”

She looked at
him. “Why?”

“I don’t want anyone
to find anything that might incriminate Jeremy.”

Fiermonte and
her father had been colleagues, who had, over time, become close friends. They had
worked together on a number of cases, had even begun their careers around the
same time — Fiermonte back then an ambitious assistant district attorney, John Coyle
Sr. an on-the-rise FBI agent. A loyal family friend, Fiermonte, in the three years
since their father had been killed, had done whatever he could, whenever he
could, to help his late friend’s children. He had pulled strings to keep Cat in
New York City — FBI agents were usually assigned to a number of different field
offices around the country in the course of their career, but he’d thought it
would be better if Cat remained near what was left of her family.

So his desire
to protect Jeremy wasn’t uncharacteristic, nor was it unfounded — God only knew
what the poor kid had gotten himself into now.

“I could go,”
Cat said. “I could have a look around.”

“I’d rather not
put you in that situation if we can avoid it.”

It was obvious
to her what he meant. Her career was hanging by a thread, and the last thing
she needed was to get involved in some kind of cover-up.

Cat looked
toward the detective once more. “How’d he know to call you?”

“I’ve worked
with him before. So did your father. His name is Morris; he’s a good guy. When
he saw the name on the registration, he thought he’d better let me know.”

“What does he
know so far?”

“All we have at
this point is that an unknown male fired shots at a second unknown male. The
second male was driving the motorcycle and the one doing the shooting was
chasing him on foot. Since the bike is registered to your brother, we’re
assuming he’s the second male. We don’t think he was hit — there isn’t any
blood on the bike or the pavement. According to witnesses, the rider was
heading for the Williamsburg Bridge and gunning the engine when the bike went
down. Morris found a patch of antifreeze where it first crashed. I’m told rain
can make spills like that pretty slick. Both the bike and the rider slid for a
few yards before coming to a stop. Then the rider got up and started running.”

“He wasn’t
hurt?”

“They said he
slid like a pro. Landed on his shoulder, kept his head up. He was wearing a
leather jacket and had a backpack on.”

“And the
shooter?”

“He broke off
pursuit, most likely because of the witnesses.”

“Where were
they?”

Fiermonte
pointed toward the entrance to the bar, about halfway between where they were
standing and where the bike lay. “They were coming out. Four of them. Morris
figures the bike must have been parked nearby, maybe on the next block or around
the corner. The rider probably had just enough time to get on and get it
started and head for the bridge before the shooter caught up to him and opened
up. I don’t really see anyone on foot keeping up with a Ducati for very long,
do you?”

“No.” Scanning
the buildings lining the northern side of Delancey Street, Cat said, “Did the
witnesses see anything else?”

“The rider
wasn’t wearing a helmet, which is of course against the law in this state. That
corroborates our theory that whoever was riding was likely in a hurry when he
got on.”

“What direction
did he run off in?”

“East. But all
eyes were on the shooter at that point, so no one knows if he ran onto the bridge
or ducked down any one of the side streets off Delancey.”

“If their eyes
were on the shooter, they must have been able to describe him.”

“Big guy,
white, dressed all in black, baseball hat with the bill low.”

“That’s
helpful,” she mocked. “Anything else?”

“His gun was
fitted with a suppressor. And they found three ejected bullet casings just a
few feet from the northern corner of Clinton. The casings appear to be grouped
together.”

Cat knew enough
to recognize that a “triple tap” — three quick shots — meant that the shooter
was probably a professional. So, too, was the fact that the shooter’s weapon
was fitted with a suppressor. Not a lot of street criminals used equipment like
that, and most shooters were cowboys just dying to shoot someone and fired off
as many shots as possible whenever they had the chance.

Of course Fiermonte
would know this as well.

“Did anyone see
what direction the shooter went in?”

“He turned north
onto Clinton.”

“So he
backtracked, exited the way he entered.”

“Looks that
way.”

“Maybe he had a
vehicle there.”

“Maybe.”

Cat thought
about all this.

Fiermonte
looked at her in that doubting way of his.
Once a prosecutor, always a
prosecutor.
She couldn’t help but wonder then what hell it would be for the
woman who dated him.

“It is possible
Jeremy is using again?” he asked. “This could easily be drug related. A buy gone
bad, or maybe a dealer he owed money to tracked him down.”

She shrugged. “It’s
possible.”

“If you know
anything, Cat, don’t hold back.”

“Like I said, I
haven’t talked to him in a while.”

“But he was
living in your father’s old apartment. You know that for certain.”

“The building’s
rent-controlled. To keep the lease we needed it to be the primary address for
one of us. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he was living there. He could have
turned around and sublet it to someone for quick cash.”