The Betrayer (25 page)

They pulled up to an abandoned warehouse, not in Manhattan but Brooklyn. Rachel knew enough about the layout of New York City to determine that much. And she had taken note of the street names once they got off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and the series of turns made to bring them to this place.

Smith parked at the loading dock entrance, got out, pulled open the heavy overhead door, then got back in behind the wheel and steered into the open bay.

Ahead was a small, enclosed office, its wide windows covered with wire mesh.

In it was a man Rachel did not recognize. In his fifties, bearded, dressed in a cheap suit. The man who hired her had saved her from the Coyle woman last night. He had helped her to his car, had tended to her in the motel room. She had seen his face, not just once but several times. Not just in the dark outdoors, but in the lighted room.

The bearded man inside that small office was not him.

Vitali and Smith stood outside the glass-enclosed office and watched casually as this man — a doctor or medic — checked Rachel’s eyes. They were smoking when he took her blood pressure, didn’t look away when he asked her to open her blouse so he could listen to her lungs with a cold stethoscope.

Five minutes later the bearded man was standing on the loading dock with Smith and Vitali while Rachel remained in the office and buttoned up her blouse with hands that trembled slightly. Though the door was closed, she could hear the doctor well enough.

“Mild concussion,” he told the two men. His accent was Serbian. “You’re lucky. Any worse, and the sedation could have killed her.”

“Can she do her job?” Vitali asked.

The doctor shrugged. “Sure, why not? She’s a strong woman. Very strong. Good heartbeat.” He looked at Smith. “You’ll lock up?”

Smith nodded.

“Can I borrow one of those?” The doctor was nodding toward the cigarette in Smith’s hand.

Smith held out his pack. The doctor dug out a cigarette with one finger, then left.

“There’s a room with two cots upstairs,” Smith said to Vitali. “Wait there.”

Rachel could tell by the Russian’s body language that he didn’t like this. But he accepted his orders without question.

She knew he would do the same when it came time to kill her.

Smith stepped over to the office and opened the door. Rachel, tucking in her blouse, acted as if she hadn’t heard a word.

“Well?” she said.

“You’re good to go,” Smith told her. “You two will wait here.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as it takes.”

She and Vitali were led up to the next floor. It was a maze of small, makeshift rooms — dozens of them divided by plaster walls that didn’t come close to reaching the high ceiling. A half-built call center, she thought. Or perhaps some kind of sex club. Either way, someone’s attempt at making money from this decrepit building.

In one of the rooms stood two cots and a half-dozen shopping bags, undoubtedly filled with food and water, medical supplies, cell phone chargers, and so on.

“There’s a bathroom on the other side,” Smith said to Rachel. “No shower, but there’s a sink. I put a box of hair dye in there. Dark. It might sting a bit, considering those cuts in your scalp, but he suggests you use it. Do you understand?”

Rachel nodded.

Smith looked at Vitali, said, “Keep an eye on her,” then left.

It was just Rachel and that disturbed Russian kid now.

She sat on her bunk on one side of the small room, and he on his on the other.

In her duffel was a sweater, along with several actual weapons and other common items that she could use as weapons. She asked the Russian if it was okay if she got her sweater. He said nothing, then stood, picked up the duffel, and carried it to her. He laid it by her bunk, then returned to his own and sat.

She opened the duffel and removed the sweater, but made sure one of the weapons — a stiletto knife — was on top of her remaining clothing and within easy reach. Then she placed the still-open duffel by the foot of her cot.

She put the sweater around her shoulders as the Russian stared at her.

Johnny and Haley were approaching the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Seventh Street when a text came through to Johnny’s cell phone.

He removed it from his pocket and read it as they walked, a puzzled look crossing his face.

“What?” Haley said.

“It’s a number.”

“Phone number?”

“No. Room number, I think.”

He slowed to a stop, Haley with him. His eyes, as always, were scanning their surroundings aggressively but discreetly.

“Maybe they changed rooms,” Haley said.

Johnny thought about that for a moment, then nodded. They continued on, but Johnny was clearly wary.

The lobby of the Gershwin was crowded, so Johnny and Haley were able to pass the front desk without being seen by either of the two busy clerks.

Regardless, a tattooed girl and her man clad in jeans and a black T-shirt were not an unusual sight for this European-style hotel.

There was only one elevator, but before they got into it, Johnny made a quick visual sweep of the area. There was no second exit — if there were, it would certainly have been clearly marked.

So only one way out of the lobby.

Haley waited with him, knew what he had determined, and why it was important. Together they stepped into the elevator and rode in it with several other guests. They were its only occupants by the time it reached the seventh floor.

The corridor was a series of swinging doorways. Johnny had never seen a hotel designed quite like this. He did immediately recognize, however, a tactical advantage to staying at a place like this.

They reached the door and knocked.

Cat studied Johnny as he walked to the center of the room. She could tell by the way he moved that he was injured, and probably badly.

She knew by this — and by the redheaded woman acting almost as a crutch beside him — that he had in fact been in the car that crashed in Brooklyn last night.

Johnny’s eyes went to Cat’s right arm, set in a nylon cast and suspended in a sling. He looked back at her face again but she just shook her head —
Don’t ask, I’ll tell you later, there are more important things we need to deal with now.

“It’s good to see you, Johnny,” she said.

“You, too, Cat.” He introduced his sister to Haley. As they said hello, Johnny looked around the room. It was actually a small suite — living room and bedroom divided by French doors, which were currently closed. The windows of the doors were frosted white.

“He’s in there?”

“Yes. He’s still a bit groggy, though. Still under the effects.”

“Of?”

“Heroin.”

“So he
is
using again.”

“No. He says someone injected him against his will.”

“And you believe him.”

Cat nodded.

“Who would do that?” Johnny asked.

“There were two men. One was the guy we saw in the surveillance video, and the other was an undercover detective named David Smith.”

“Why would an undercover cop inject Jeremy with heroin?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know about the guy?”

“Not much. It seems that he was tasked with infiltrating Dickey’s crew. But the thing is, it’s starting to look to me that he’s actually
part
of Dickey’s crew. Working for Dickey, maybe giving him information, helping him stay one step ahead of the cops and the Feds.”

The accusation was a familiar one.

It was the same thing, more or less, that their father had been accused of, following his murder.

Of course, John Coyle Sr. hadn’t infiltrated Dickey’s crew. He had, over his career, infiltrated the crews of other mobsters.

All rivals of Dickey’s.

And the cover that had helped Coyle make his way into those crews — and stay alive for the time he operated within them — had been provided by Dickey.

According to an informant, Coyle had gathered information as much for Dickey McVicker’s benefit as for the FBI’s.

And was paid well for it by McVicker.

All lies, but in the end, that didn’t matter.

Then, or now.

“So you’re saying that guy in the surveillance video and this undercover cop are both Dickey’s men,” Johnny said.

“Yes. Smith was at the warehouse when we met. You, me, Dickey, and Donnie Fiermonte.”

“You saw him there?”

“You did, too. He’s the guy who opened the loading dock door as you were driven in.”

It took a moment, but then Johnny saw the man in his mind.

“The smoker,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“And Jeremy says he saw these two men together.”

“Smith held him down while the other guy, a Russian, injected him.”

Johnny paused. “He’s sure it was a Russian?”

Cat knew by the way he asked this that he understood the significance of the nationality of Jeremy’s attacker.

“That’s what he says.”

Johnny thought about that for a moment, then: “Did Jeremy escape?”

“What do you mean?”

“If he saw their faces, why would they just let him go?”

“They didn’t just let him go. They beat the shit out of him. They shot heroin into him and dumped him in McCarren Park around dawn this morning.”

The location — so close to where he and Haley lived in hiding — unsettled Johnny, but he put that aside for now and continued.

“Were they trying to kill him? Trying to make it look like he died of an overdose?”

“I don’t know. But my guess is no.”

“Why do you think that?”

“He was high when we found him, but that was it.”

“We?”

“Donnie was with me.”

Johnny nodded but said nothing. The man being with Cat made sense. Fiermonte was to her, after all, as McVicker was to him.

Cat continued. “If Jeremy had been injected with enough to cause an overdose, he wouldn’t be able to stay awake. He wouldn’t be able to talk, let alone walk.”

“But does that make sense, Cat?”

“I’m not following.”

“Look, I know about his recovered memories. I talked to a friend of Jeremy’s, from a long time ago. Maybe you remember him. A punk named Atkins.”

“Rich kid turned dealer.”

“That’s him. He said Jeremy called him a month ago and told him about his memories. He also wanted to know if Atkins could set up a meeting with Dickey.”

“Hold it a minute,” Cat said. “How did you find him?”

“Dickey sent me to him.”

Cat said nothing.

“I know, it doesn’t make sense to me, either. But neither does Jeremy’s getting beat up, shot up, and left in a relatively safe part of Brooklyn. How did you find him, by the way?”

“He called me.”

“He had his phone with him.”

“Yeah.”

“So they dumped him with his phone. That doesn’t really add up, Cat. If Jeremy were a threat to Dickey — if what he remembered were a threat to Dickey in any way — then why would two men you think work for Dickey just let him go?”

“I know you owe him, Johnny,” Cat said. “I know you owe Dickey a lot, I get that, I do. And I know you’re all about loyalty, and that there was this loyalty thing between Dickey and Dad, that Dad had trusted Dickey with his life and ours for so long. But you might see things differently when you talk to Jeremy.”

Johnny said nothing. It was obvious to Cat that he wasn’t ready to do that, to face the brother he blamed for their father’s death.

But that was Johnny — black and white, right and wrong, good and bad.

For such a smart guy, he always did have a tendency to be ignorant to the gray areas of life, the shadowy places that existed between all things.

Blind, even.

Or at least he was when it came to his kid brother. Johnny didn’t seem to have any problem with Dickey McVicker’s dwelling in — and profiting from — those shadowy places.

Loyalty trumped all else.

Haley suggested that Johnny sit down, but he told her he was okay. He would stand there till he was on the verge of collapsing, Cat knew. Haley then asked Cat if there was any bottled water in the room. Cat stepped to the desk, grabbed a complimentary bottle of Fiji Water, then handed it to the woman.

Haley unscrewed the cap and offered the bottle to Johnny. He shook his head, keeping his eyes on his sister.

Cat was reminded of their childhood dynamic — she was the eldest child, but he was the eldest
boy
. The result was a constant vying for power, Johnny challenging her in every way. As they grew older, they competed endlessly for their father’s attention and approval. This drove them both to excel, but it also kept them apart.

That distance remained even now that they were adults.

And so did Johnny’s need to challenge her.

“Why did you change rooms at the last minute, Cat?” he said.

“We need to be very cautious from now on.”

“Is there reason to believe that anyone knows Jeremy is here?”

“He says he didn’t tell anyone.”

“That he can remember, right?”

“You’re saying he forgot.”

“I’m just saying maybe in his condition we shouldn’t rely on his memory.”

“It sounds to me like you want him to have relapsed.”

“Why would I want that?”

“So you can dismiss him. Like you did years ago. Like you’ve always done with him, since we were kids. You know, maybe that’s why they shot him up before they let him go. To discredit him, make sure that no one would listen to him.” She paused. “That’s why he didn’t come to either of us in the first place. When he recovered his memories, when he suddenly knew what he knew. He didn’t think we’d believe him. That’s why he was so determined to do this on his own.”

“So he’s told you what he remembered.”

“Yes.”

“And you believe him.”

She nodded. “I do.”

“So why do you need me in on this?”

Cat paused, then said in a softer voice, “I know what happened in Brooklyn last night. Fiermonte gave me a heads-up this morning. I won’t stop you from going, and I won’t look for you. Before you go, though, before you disappear again, you need to know what really happened. What our father did that got him killed. And you need to know the truth about the man who has been protecting you and your girlfriend for the past year.”

Johnny was quiet for a moment. “How bad does it look? Last night, I mean.”

“Hair in the vehicle. Yours and hers. A thumbprint on the steering wheel. And a man killed by a single blow.” She paused. “At first I thought when you came back to the States and didn’t visit me that you were just avoiding me, that it was still too painful for you to be around anything or anyone that reminded you of him. But I realize now that everything about the way you live says you’re a man in hiding. There’s nothing in your name, you’re entirely off the books, and the only hint that you exist at all is the record of you reentering the country over a year ago. So I’m assuming you’re hiding from something that happened during your travels abroad. Whatever it is, whatever would make a guy like you go to a man like Dickey for help, it has to be pretty bad. But this is bad, too, Johnny. The other men in the car can identify you, I assume. Maybe they will and maybe they won’t. Maybe Dickey can make this go away. But if he turns over on you, if he lets his men talk, then the cops will start looking into you. When they see you’re a ghost, they’ll want to know why. The places you went, they’re all documented by your passport, so it’s just a matter of sending e-mails and making phone calls to the right departments and the right people. After that it’s just a matter of time before whatever it is you’re running from catches up to you.”

Johnny said nothing. Cat knew she wasn’t telling him something he didn’t already know. But she also knew that if she was going to help him, she needed the truth about last night, and now.

“Were those men taking you two to Dickey?” she asked.

Johnny nodded.

“I need more than nodding right now, Johnny.”

He cleared his throat. “Dickey had Haley abducted, then left Richter and some men behind to wait for me.”

“Why would Dickey do that?”

“He had bugged my conversation with Atkins. Haley and I timed it out, and it was something Atkins said to me that made Dickey make his move.”

“What?”

“Basically, that Dickey was withholding information from me.”

“What information?”

“For starters, he knew about Jeremy’s memories.”

“How could he know that?”

“Atkins had told him.”

“What else?”

“That Jeremy had asked Atkins if he could set up a meeting with Dickey.”

“Did he?”

“Jeremy only asked if he could, never called back to actually ask him to do it. Dickey had just stood there and played dumb to all this when the four of us met at his warehouse.”

“What else did Atkins say?”

“That some woman named Elizabeth Hall had sent Jeremy to a hypnotherapist.”

Cat hesitated at this.

“What?” Johnny said.

“Elizabeth Hall was murdered last night. She and her husband. The way Fiermonte figures it, it happened about the same time as your car crash in Brooklyn.”

“A hit?”

“Yes. A professional. A woman. Short blonde hair, prominent cheekbones, tall.”

Johnny glanced at Cat’s broken arm. “That’s when you got that,” he concluded.