The Betrayer (33 page)

Johnny looked at Cat. No one spoke for a moment.

“It sounds to me, Johnny, like he’s your doppelganger,” Fiermonte said. “Former soldier, on the run from a killing, living off the grid, life forever changed by the death of his father — a man who was killed by your own father, by the way. And Dickey, a mobster, was always like an uncle to you, wasn’t he? Everyone is supposed to have an evil twin, so I guess we’ve found yours.”

Johnny said nothing, though it was clear he didn’t appreciate the comparison.

“Johnny isn’t a cold-blooded killer,” Cat said.

“Of course not.” Fiermonte smiled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. I just didn’t realize till I was saying it all out loud that you and Dragoi have some fundamentals in common.” He addressed both Johnny and Cat. “This guy, he’s as scary as they come. He kills for profit and while he’s in town, he kills for pleasure, too. Which says to me he has a hard time with impulse control. And yet he’s a
skilled
killer. Only one fuck-up in how many murders — murders that, of course, all benefit Dickey.”

“And yet he didn’t kill Jeremy.”

“No,” Fiermonte said. “He didn’t. Not yet.”

“So you’re telling me that you’re no better off than you were before Jeremy got his memory back.”

“As a prosecutor, I’m saying there is nothing in those recordings that will nail Dickey for your father’s murder. There isn’t even anything that might help us clear your father’s name. I have to be honest, Johnny, your father made a deal with the devil by working with Dickey the way he did. I had to look the other way on a lot of the things your father did as an undercover agent. That’s the nature of the beast, the price we pay for the information we need. But Dickey used your father like a patsy. He fed your father information that helped us bring down his competition. And when your father was no longer any use to Dickey, he was murdered. The information that came out after your father was killed — the testimony of the one man we happened to be lucky enough to catch for his murder — was information only a few people had, one of whom was good ol’ Dickey.”

“What do you mean ‘the man you were lucky enough to catch’?”

“An informant gave us Tambov’s address. And when we found him, he was basically sitting at his kitchen table like he was waiting for us.”

“Dickey convinced him to take the fall?”

“I have no doubt that he convinced Tambov to say what he said under oath. I’m sure it was all carefully scripted and well rehearsed.”

“Why would anyone let himself get arrested and sent to prison?”

“Dickey needed his testimony on the record.”

“I get that, but how do you get someone to agree to that?”

“Offer him something he wants,” Cat said. “Money in a secret location for when he gets out, a promise to take care of his family while he’s away, that kind of thing.”

“You know better than anyone, Johnny, that Dickey has some pretty impressive powers of persuasion.”

“Okay, so where is Tambov now? Maybe he can tell us something. Maybe prison isn’t as easy as he thought it would be.”

“Tambov never went to prison. He knew he wouldn’t from the start.”

“Why not?”

“Even though he was in our custody because Dickey wanted him in our custody, he would only testify in exchange for relocation. We gave it to him. Witness Protection had him for a while.”

“Had him?”

Fiermonte nodded. “He turned up dead in Phoenix. A ‘motel suicide.’ Dragoi, more than likely.”

“But if he was in Witness Protection, how could anyone get to him?”

“He ditched the program and went into hiding. Maybe one of the three men knew where he had gone. It’s likely that he would contact one of them, or maybe all. Strangers in a strange land often come together, like you and your Ranger buddy. Dragoi could have extracted that information from any one of those men prior to executing them.”

Johnny thought about his own father then, the hours between his abduction and his murder.

Terrible murder, according to Tambov.

Hacked to pieces.

He thought, too, of what Jeremy had heard Dickey tell the elder Gregorian.

I need information before he is killed.

“As things stand now,” Fiermonte said, “Jeremy oughtn’t have bothered.”

Johnny wanted to stop Fiermonte there, for the sake of his brother listening in, but before Johnny could speak, Fiermonte said the one thing Johnny feared most.

The one thing he knew the man was going to say.

“Elizabeth Hall got herself killed for nothing.”

Cat stepped forward, as if to stop Fiermonte there, and said to Johnny, “I’m going to set up an e-mail account. I’ll text you the address in the next few hours. After you get it, you probably should destroy your cell phones. I’ll check the account every morning and every night. I’ll let you know any developments here, and you’ll let me know how you’re doing, okay? Even though I’m going to take certain precautions to make sure no one can track the account back to me, don’t be too specific about where you are or even who you are. Okay?”

Johnny nodded. Fiermonte asked him if he needed money.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“I wish I had better news, son.”

“There’s nothing else we can do?”

“Nothing that I can think of.”

“What about Atkins?”

“What about him?”

“He told Dickey that Jeremy had called him, told Dickey what Jeremy had said about the memories. Couldn’t Dickey’s actions after that be seen as an indication of guilt? Motive, at least.”

“Motive only gets us so far.”

“At least bring Atkins in, put pressure on him. He’s a drug dealer for Dickey. Maybe he can give you
something
.”

“We would do that, Johnny, if we knew where Atkins was. But he has disappeared. Either he’s gone into hiding or he’s dead and his body hasn’t been found yet. If it’s ever found, that is.”

“I saw him with a woman. A young woman. Maybe she knows where he went.”

“Did you get a name?”

“No. But I could try to find her.”

“You’ve done everything you can, Johnny,” Cat said. “You’ve done your best. But you need to take care of yourself.”

“We’ll wait till you and your girlfriend have exited before Cat breaks into their DVR,” Fiermonte said.

“What about Jeremy?”

“He’ll come stay with me,” Cat said.

“But who’s to say he won’t run off?”

“I’ll arrange for protection. No one comes into Cat’s place, and no one comes out. But I can’t do that either till you and your girlfriend are gone. I don’t mean to rush you, Johnny, but the sooner we have some men parked outside, the better.”

Johnny hesitated. Something was bothering him, something that didn’t make sense.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “If Dickey got the original recordings from Jeremy’s therapist, then wouldn’t he know they weren’t a threat to him? He would have listened to them, he would have had one of his lawyers listen to them. If they don’t prove anything, why all this?”

Fiermonte glanced at Cat, then looked back at Johnny and shrugged. “He’s been eliminating any and all witnesses for the past three years. What Jeremy knows may not prove anything, but it does implicate Dickey in your father’s abduction, and for a man like Dickey, that’s enough of a threat.”

“Then why didn’t he have Jeremy killed when they had him? If Dickey already knew the tapes proved nothing, then why let Jeremy go? Why bother to use him to lead them to where his copy was hidden?”

Fiermonte looked at Cat again, as if asking for her to take this question. She did so without missing a beat.

“Dickey’s a madman, Johnny,” she said. “I know you never saw that side of him, but he’s a vicious thug who got where he is by killing everyone who stood in his way. Or
might
have stood in his way. And he used our father to do it.”

“He wants every copy,” Fiermonte said. “That’s the way he operates. His paranoia is Stalin-like. It’s also why no one has been able to touch him. He doesn’t leave loose ends.”

“And once he has them all?”

Fiermonte and Cat looked at each other.

“He’ll probably let Gregorian’s son off the leash,” Fiermonte said. “So the sooner we arrange for protection…” He stopped there.

Cat approached her brother. “I’ll go up with you and bring Jeremy down.”

Johnny hesitated once more, then nodded. Together he and Cat left the room.

They passed through the first swinging door, turned the corner, passed through the second door, and reached the single elevator. Cat pressed the button, and as they waited, she looked at Johnny.

“Are you going to make it?” she said.

Johnny nodded.

“I’m going to ask you a question, okay?”

He nodded.

“You went to Vietnam because you wanted to see the jungles where Dad had fought, right? Where he went on his patrols.”

“Yeah.”

“What were you hoping to find?”

“Do you remember what he used to say about Vietnam?”

“It made him the man he was.”

“What else?”

Cat had to think for a moment. “That it was the first step in his long journey to meeting Mom.”

“He always said that if he hadn’t gone to Vietnam, he wouldn’t have been able to afford college, and if he hadn’t gone to college, he wouldn’t have been recruited by the FBI.”

“And if he hadn’t joined the FBI,” Cat said, “he wouldn’t have been standing where he was the night he saw our mother.”

“Every step he took from Vietnam on was a step toward his destiny. That’s the way he saw it. Every patrol he went on and survived was the first of thousands of steps toward the night everything changed for him. I wanted to walk the ground he had walked, to know it with my five senses.” Johnny shrugged. “I wanted to see the birthplace of his destiny.”

“Because you felt deprived of your own,” Cat said. “Because you were discharged.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

The elevator door opened and they entered. Cat pressed the button for the next floor up, the door closed, and the elevator began to rise.

She was smiling at her brother, about to say something. Johnny looked at her. “What?” he said curiously.

But before Cat could answer, they heard a sound.

A woman’s voice.

Muffled, tinny, urgent.

Coming from Johnny’s pocket.

He dug out his cell phone. Haley’s voice was bursting through the speaker. She had unmuted her phone and was saying, “Johnny, can you hear me? Johnny?
Johnny
?
Jeremy just left. He ran out the door. I think he’s heading for the stairs. He took your knife…”

Only a few seconds passed from when Johnny and Cat first heard Haley to when they reached the next floor and the elevator doors parted.

But those were long seconds.

Johnny exited the car first, followed by Cat. He headed for the door to the stairs, which was to the right. Cat stepped toward the swinging door to the left.

Opening the door, Johnny paused and listened but heard nothing coming up the stairwell. If Jeremy had made it here and was running down, his footsteps certainly would have been audible.

Johnny looked toward Cat, who had reached the swinging door. She opened it quickly, saw nothing, and looked back at Johnny, as if to say
Where the fuck is he?
She moved through the door and started toward the turn, around which was another swinging door.

It was at this moment that Johnny wondered if his brother had picked this hotel for this very reason — because its hallways were a maze of turns and swinging doors, unlike your standard hotel, with long, straight corridors that offered no cover or anywhere to hide.

Smart kid.

Maybe too smart for his own good.

Johnny left the stairwell and hurried past the elevator as its doors were closing. He could hear the car moving at its turtle’s pace to the floor above. He reached the swinging door and opened it.

“Anything?” he said softly.

“No.”

Johnny stepped through the door and watched as Cat approached the corner, where she bumped into Haley as she was coming around it.

“Where’d he go?” Cat demanded.

“I don’t know.” Johnny could see panic in Haley’s face. He could tell, too, that she was a little angry at herself.

Johnny asked her what happened.

“He was lying on the sofa. We’d just heard you guys leaving the room. He asked me to get him a wet washcloth from the bathroom. I was running the water when I heard the door. I’m sorry,” she said. “I fucked up.”

“It’s okay,” Johnny told her. “Go back to the room and lock the door.”

Cat moved past Johnny, heading toward the first swinging door. “He has to be here somewhere,” she said.

Johnny followed her through the door, and it was as the door was swinging closed that they both heard from above the sound of elevator doors shutting, followed by the sound of the elevator descending.

Cat looked at Johnny.

“Shit,” she said.

She hurried to the elevator door and pressed the button several times, but it was too late. The elevator passed their floor without stopping.

Johnny bolted toward the stairwell door, Cat right behind him.

They ran through the door and started down the stairs. Each step Johnny took rattled his ribs, but he ignored the pain and pushed himself down flight after flight. He moved as quickly as he could, Cat right on his heels. Their footsteps and the sound of their breathing echoed in the stairwell.

It was between the third and second floors that Johnny stumbled and took a bad fall. Cat almost tripped over her brother but grabbed the railing with her good hand at the last moment.

Johnny got back up the second his body came to a stop. Cat hurried to his side and helped him. Neither said a word. Once he was up, they continued down, Cat now in the lead.

They reached the ground floor and burst into the lobby. The elevator was to their right. Cat ran to it and stopped short not far from it. Johnny only needed to look at his sister’s face to know that they were too late.

The doors were open and the car was empty.

They looked to their left and saw Jeremy exiting the lobby and turning right.

“Fuck me,” Cat muttered.

They broke into a run, Johnny now in the lead. Hurrying out the door and into the heavy rain, they looked to their right — westward, toward Fifth Avenue.

Jeremy had already crossed Twenty-Seventh Street and reached the corner, was turning now left onto Fifth, heading south.

Again, Johnny bolted, Cat taking up the rear. As he reached and turned the corner, he felt a new pain — a familiar pain he hadn’t felt in a long time.

His ankle.

Six pins held it together — and the damn thing always acted up whenever it rained.

But this was more than the usual acting up. This was a searing pain, like small bones were on the verge of splitting.

Still, he ran with everything he had. Despite the sheets of rain before him — and the drops, surprisingly sharp, falling into his eyes — he could see Jeremy ahead. The kid was moving in an all-out sprint toward Madison Square Park.

It was when Johnny crossed Twenty-Seventh, the park just a block away, that he felt himself slowing. He couldn’t help it, his body was reaching its limits. Cat passed him, and in a flash their old childhood competition was resurrected in Johnny, but it only lasted for a few seconds.

For the sake of his ankle, his battered ribs, and that mystery pain in his collarbone, Johnny eased back, slowing his pace significantly. He was still running, still in the game, but there was no way he was going to catch up to his twenty-one-year-old brother.

It was up to Cat now.

The second-best runner in what was left of the Coyle family.

In pursuit of the best.

Johnny watched as Cat pulled ahead, her legs pumping as steady as pistons.

She had a pretty good idea of where Jeremy was headed — the subway. There were two entrances nearby, to the 6 train on Twenty-Third Street at the corner of Park Avenue, and the N/R, just south of Madison Square Park. To get to the one at the southern edge of the park, all he would need to do was continue straight down Fifth, but to get to the other one — the one farther away, and the less busy of the two — he would likely cut diagonally through the park.

Jeremy was fifty feet ahead of Cat when he crossed Twenty-Fourth Street, where he suddenly veered off Fifth and entered the park.

So it was the 6 train.

The less-busy station.

Ten seconds later Cat crossed Twenty-Fourth and followed him into the park. The Flatiron District was a business district — few residential units — so the park was really only crowded during the daytime. It was of course night now, but more than that, it was raining — the kind of steady downpour that shows no signs of ending and all but empties the city of pedestrians.

Cat quickly looked around and saw only her brother cutting across the now-empty park.

Her right arm was bouncing in its sling, and the pain this caused was close to agony. She placed it against her chest, holding it there with her left hand, cradling it like a baby, but that severely threatened her balance — she needed the pumping action of her arms — so she said, “Fuck it,” and yanked her arm out of her sling, then pulled the sling over her head and dropped it to the pavement.

The pain returned — it was both sharp and throbbing — but she didn’t care.

Has Jeremy kept in shape? she wondered. Did he run several times a week like she did? Or was he relying right now on his innate ability? The gift he was born with, and had squandered.

Or maybe his rage was what was propelling him, keeping him running even as his lungs burned and his legs trembled. Holding him up and keeping him moving forward till he reached a runner’s high, till his brain exploded and cascading neurochemicals triggered a euphoria that would allow him to run like this for miles.

But I don’t have to worry about this, she thought. Not unless he’s heading somewhere other than the entrance for the 6 train.

In a sprint, a mad dash, I can hold my own, I know it.

But if this becomes a long-distance run, he will lose me.

Jeremy exited the park at Madison Avenue. The subway entrance was maybe a hundred yards away now, a little less than a block down Twenty-Third. Cat exited the park ten seconds later — she hadn’t closed on him, but he hadn’t pulled any farther away, either. She crossed Madison herself and was a quarter of the way down the block when Jeremy reached the subway entrance and disappeared from her sight.

She dug deep and found just a little bit more, enough to allow her to push herself and increase her speed.

She reached the entrance and immediately heard rising up from it the unmistakable sound of a train arriving at the station below.

She started down the stairs, reaching the bottom just in time to see Jeremy jump the turnstile and cross the platform as the 6 train was slowing to a stop.

Its doors opened and Jeremy entered a car without breaking his stride.

Cat reached the turnstile, but there was no way she could jump it with her broken arm. Using her left, she clumsily searched her right pocket for her MetroCard, but she knew there was no way she was going to make it.

Jeremy was visible to her through the subway car’s open door. He was looking at his sister. His chest was heaving from the run, but his bruised face was blank.

He stared at Cat for a moment, stoically, then, as if indifferent to her, simply looked away.

The doors closed and the subway began to move.