The Betrayer (7 page)

“They were close,”
Cat explained. “I think he always saw the…potential in Johnny, if you know what
I mean. He used to send Johnny gifts on his birthday, then checks while he was
in college. I think this blinded Johnny a little, at least for a while.”

“Can you contact
him?”

“I know
how
,
yeah.”

“If he knows
where Johnny is, you should set something up.”

“It would take
some…arranging.”

“We don’t have
much choice here. And we don’t have a lot of time to waste.”

In a matter of a
few hours, Fiermonte had led her step-by-step across a number of lines. First she
had been called to a crime scene involving a loved one. Then she had been sent
to that loved one’s apartment, from which she removed evidence. And now she was
being asked to make contact with a man from whom she had always distanced
herself.

Her father’s
oldest friend. The man he had grown up with, and who had, through his underworld
connections, provided her father with everything he needed to build and
maintain his various cover stories.

And protect his
family.

He was also the
last person to have spoken with her father on the night he was taken.

Dickey
McVicker.

She knew now
that she’d probably be crossing a few more lines before this was done.

The connection
was beginning to fail. Fiermonte’s voice disappeared for a moment, then
returned.

Cat heard him say
through a field of static, “You’d better call him now. The sooner we set this up,
the better.”

“I’ll try,” she
said, but the line had already gone dead.

She closed the
phone and dropped it onto the passenger seat.

A few minutes
later, she was turning her Mustang onto Twenty-Third Street and heading east
toward Fifth.

She passed the
Chelsea Hotel, an eight-story fortress of brick and tall windows and wrought
iron railings, without even looking at it.

Vitali was standing before the
bathroom mirror and cleaning the small cut over his right eye. He felt foolish,
would never have sustained such an injury had he not been ordered by his
employer to
hold back
. He would never have missed had he not been told
to follow his orders
no matter what
. In fact, it had taken real
concentration for him to overcome his training and
not
hit his target. He
thought he may have fucked up when he saw the bike suddenly go down, but by the
way the Coyle kid had gotten up and took off on foot, Vitali knew he hadn’t
been hit.

A strange thing
to be pleased about.

When the wound
was closed — it was minor, more damaging to his ego than anything else — he
stripped down, showered, and redressed. He’d bought a pack of something called
American Spirits during his supply run yesterday and began smoking. Each brand
he tried was worse than the one before it, and these things — weak and all but
tasteless — were no exception.

He roamed the
States, in the employ of his benefactor, for one reason only: so he would be
readily available for his shot at vengeance. His benefactor had promised him
that his time would come, sooner or later. He had also promised that he would
do his best to give Vitali enough work to support himself in the meantime. He
had kept that promise, had kept Vitali busy enough, and paid him a decent-enough
wage, but Vitali knew that he could earn so much more as a free agent on the
international market, in Europe and Asia. He also knew of a man — a wealthy
associate of his uncle’s — who would pay Vitali to kill neo-Nazis in Russia. That
would be work he’d very much enjoy and could be proud of, that would, in his
mind anyway, count as service to his country, the land of his father and his father’s
father, who had survived cold and starvation and Nazis only to be thrown into
one of Stalin’s prisons a year later and simply disappear.

Now that Vitali’s
chance at vengeance was here, he wanted to get it over with. He wanted to kill
the one responsible for his father’s death, so that his father could finally rest
in peace. And once that was done, he would say good-bye to the States, exit as
secretly as he had entered, and begin his own life, earn the kind of money he
should be earning, maybe even make a lasting mark — his mark — on his beloved
homeland.

Yes, he would
miss the freedom of travel that America offered, and he would miss the women he
encountered here, who were so easily preyed upon, so filled with a sense of
entitlement that they refused to see danger even when it was staring them in
the face, even as it told them what they wanted to hear, got them to undress,
fucked them with a violence they mistook for abandon or passion.

He would miss
all that, but he would not miss these shitty cigarettes.

He finished
tending to his injury, then stood by his window and looked down on Twenty-Third
Street. To overcome his bruised ego, he attempted to recall the high he’d felt
up in Portsmouth, hoped to tap into the memory of it, but all he could remember
was having been high, not the feeling of being high. It was the same for the
high he had felt in Boston as well. Long gone, and like a dream that way — so
vivid as it unfolded, so rich in sensations, but it could never last much past
consciousness.

He had stalked
the Coyle kid, had felt the thrill of that, but he had not made the kill, so
the process he loved so much had not been completed. He’d found this deeply frustrating,
and he didn’t deal with frustration well. His entire existence was designed
around the balancing of rising tension and the eventual release of that tension.
It was like a musical note, his father had always said. Each and every note has
three components: attack, sustain, and release. Attack determines how the note
is struck — softly or hard, or anywhere in between. Sustain determines how long
it is allowed to ring, and if it gets louder or softer as it rings. And release
determines the nature of its end.

Vitali’s life — his
inner life, anyway — was a musical note. When his tension began, it began
quietly — he never actually heard the striking of the note, just realized suddenly
that it was there, ringing steadily. And it was as much a physical sensation — a
vibration in his heart — as it was an actual sound in his ears. He could feel
the note build over the hours, and then the days, feel the rising crescendo. And
he knew when enough was enough, when to finally seek relief by killing, and at
last ceasing the ringing altogether, emptying his ears and heart of it.

All other needs
— hunger, thirst, rest — were secondary to this.

After his third
cigarette, he decided he’d sleep for a bit. When he awoke a few hours later, he
was thinking of working out, or maybe going for a run. He wasn’t far from the
West Side Highway, could run along the walkway that followed the eastern bank
of the Hudson River. He could watch women there — not just fellow runners but
tourists as well. And the relief that came with a hard run should be enough to
keep his mind balanced for now.

He needed to
keep in balance, keep the compulsion in check. Otherwise, mistakes could be
made.

He was still in
bed, though, when his cell phone chirped. He answered without looking at the caller
ID, and did so with a simple “Yeah.” Only one person knew the number to his
prepaid cell phone.

“I’m sending you
some help,” the male voice said.

Vitali had
expected to hear anything but this, and a surge of frustration immediately rushed
through him. He kept his cool, though, didn’t allow his emotion to show in his
voice. “Why?”

“I think you
might need it.”

Vitali didn’t
know whether or not to be insulted by this. Could his benefactor, the man his
father had served loyally for years, be angry that he missed — when he’d been instructed
to miss?

Scare him
,
he’d been told.
I need him scared, very scared
. And Vitali had done just
that. Nothing more, nothing less.

But before
Vitali could protest, the man said, “This is no reflection on you. Things have just
gotten a little more…complicated, that’s all. We need a face on all this, someone
we can afford to let people see. You can understand that, right? And no
offense, but we need a face that can open certain doors.”

Vitali closed
his eyes, knew where this was going.

“She’ll be there
only as support,” the man said. “She works for you, and she knows this. She
won’t give you any shit.”

Vitali cringed
at the feminine pronoun but said nothing.

“Sorry, but it
has to be this way,” the man said. “We can’t take any chances at this point. She’ll
be arriving at your hotel in an hour. She has the room directly below yours. I
trust you’ll show her every professional courtesy. It might be nice if you took
her out to breakfast and talked a little.”

Vitali said
nothing.

“I need you to
say something here, son.”

Vitali hated
when the man addressed him that way. He didn’t care about this man’s connection
to his father, how close they may have been, or the complete loyalty his father
had felt toward him. He didn’t care that this man had been there for him since
his father’s death — had called Vitali just moments after, had assured Vitali
that he’d be taken care of, that his day would come.
Trust me
,
the
man had said. What other choice did Vitali, nineteen and suddenly all alone in
a strange country, have?

Still, Vitali
knew not to bite the hand that fed him. At least not while it was still feeding
him.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I will
show her every professional courtesy.”

“Good.” His
benefactor sounded truly pleased. “Let her do what she does. She’s very good at
that.”

Vitali said
nothing.

“I’ll call you
when I know our next move,” the man said. “It should be soon, so be ready.”

The call ended,
and Vitali resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room.

It would be
best, he realized, if he put his rage into his workout. Tear his muscles to
shreds so they would rebuild and be even stronger than before. Push his heart
and lungs further than they had ever been pushed.

He stripped down
to his boxer briefs and was about to do pull-ups from the molding above the
closet door when he began to wonder what the woman being sent to him would look
like.

Would she be
attractive? Would she be older than he or would she be younger?

Would she be
submissive?

Then another
thought crossed his mind.

Would he, when
this was over and done with, strip her naked and kill her, then leave her body
in this room and quietly make his escape from this country once and for all?

Haley Siner slept only an
average of five hours a night, was usually awake and up well before Johnny, so when
he woke and realized that her side of the bed was empty, he wasn’t too alarmed.
He could tell by the sounds coming from beyond the heavy curtains hanging in
front of the half-open bedroom window — passing street traffic, voices, a single
bird singing — that it was daytime. A quick glance at the ticking clock on the
floor confirmed this.

So nothing to
be concerned about, except maybe that he wasn’t at this moment hearing any sounds
coming from the front of their apartment. But it was likely that she was
meditating. They were safe here, under the protection of a man Johnny trusted
more than anyone alive. Still, Johnny got up and pulled on his sweatpants, then
walked quietly down the narrow hallway that ran from the bedroom to the
kitchen.

Ready for the
worst.

But as he
neared the end of the hallway, he saw that Haley was seated at the secondhand
folding table at which they ate their meals. Just as she should be, just as she
always was. Dressed in yoga pants and a tank top, she was sipping peppermint
tea and reading from her well-worn copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s
Being Peace
.

He felt an instant
wave of relief, though anyone looking at him right then wouldn’t have seen it;
he hid his inner life well — or did from strangers, at least.

The difference
between the kitchen at the front of their apartment and the bedroom at the back
was the difference between the light and dark sides of the moon. Both he and Haley
worked long hours, from early in the afternoon to well into the night, did this
six days a week. They often didn’t come home from the bar Johnny ran — he was
also one of three bartenders, she one of two cooks — till five in the morning,
so keeping their bedroom as dark as possible was crucial to a good night’s rest.

Haley sensed
him in the kitchen doorway and looked up from her reading and smiled. She
wasn’t startled to see him suddenly there, had grown by now accustomed to his
ways, was even grateful for them, grateful that he thought in a manner she
simply didn’t.

And wouldn’t
have to, as long as he was around.

“Hey, there,”
she said softly. Her long red hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her green
eyes alive in the bright morning light that filled the tiny kitchen. She had a
natural beauty, wore little makeup, but it was her inner tranquility, a product
of years of Buddhist practice and study, that elevated her to the level of
stunning.

Johnny envied
her for her peace. She was dawn to his night, the promise of calm to his storm.
In his quietest moments, Johnny often considered where he would be had he never
met her, had she not given him reason to pull himself back from the darkness
into which he had willingly wandered.

“Hey, right
back at ya,” he replied. “You good?”

“Yes. You?”

He nodded and
ran an open palm over his shortly cropped hair, something he always did when he
first woke up. He had the dark hair and olive skin of his father — among
Johnny’s few possessions were photographs of him — but the steady blue eyes of
his mother. There was, to his regret, only one photo of her. His eyes were what
had first caught Haley’s attention when they met a year ago. They still caught
her now, every day.

Eyes she could
look into, eyes she could trust, eyes that would never — could never — lie to
her.

She’d never
known anything like that before.

“Any bad
dreams?” she asked.

He shook his
head. “None.”

She smiled
again, pleased by what to her was clearly progress. “That’s good.”

He leaned down
and kissed her good morning, tasting the peppermint on her lips.

“As good as it
gets,” he said.

Johnny needed
more than tea to get started in the morning. They didn’t own a coffeemaker, so
he filled a small soup pot with tap water, then put it on the burner to boil. As
he waited, he dropped three scoops of a generic instant coffee into a plastic thermos.

“Ready for
today’s quote?” Haley asked.

A small Zen
Quote of the Day calendar sat on the folding table. It contained sayings by everyone
from the Buddha to the Dalai Lama to Thoreau and Einstein and Miles Davis. Each
morning Haley removed yesterday’s page and read today’s to Johnny.

“Yeah, let’s
hear it.”

She had torn
off yesterday’s page already. Picking up the calendar, she read, “‘Better to
live one day virtuous and meditative than to live a hundred years immoral and
uncontrolled.’ The Buddha.”

Johnny, having
not had his coffee yet, needed to think about that for a moment. Finally, he
nodded and said, “Sounds good to me.”

“Yesterday’s
was good, too.”

He was looking
out the window, over the roof of the adjoining building. The East River was
just a few blocks away, and beyond it lay Manhattan.

They had been
home for a year, and he had managed to not once go there.

“Remind me,” he
said.

“‘What lies
behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies
within us.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

Yesterday’s rain
had caused Johnny’s left ankle to ache to the point where he almost limped, so he
was glad to be looking now at a blue sky broken only by high, white clouds.

Early June — still
spring, technically, but it was starting to feel like summer. He was glad, too,
for the hectic day ahead of them, the long hours of hard work that would carry
them till it was finally time to once more climb into bed.

Just the two of
them then, alone in the dark together, nothing between them but the deep bond
that comes from having escaped death.

And several
locked doors between them and the world.

“Yeah, that’s a
good one, too.”

“‘There wasn’t
nothing he didn’t know,’” Haley said. It was a line from
All About Eve
,
one of her favorite movies.

It wasn’t long
after this that Johnny’s cell phone rang.

He had placed the
phone on its charger on the folding table before going to bed just seven hours
ago. Haley removed it from the charger and glanced at the display screen.

“I think it’s him,”
she said matter-of-factly, holding out the phone.

He stepped to her
and saw the number displayed. There was only one “him.” Taking the phone, he
pressed the button marked Speaker held the phone a foot or so from his face,
and said, “Yeah.”

Despite the
limits of the small earpiece, Dickey McVicker’s voice managed to fill the room.

“Big Dickey”
McVicker was what everyone called him.

“I’m sending
Richter to pick you up,” the man said.

“What’s going
on?”

“We need to talk.
You and me, in person. Richter’ll be there in ten. Be ready.”

The call ended,
and Johnny closed the phone.

He could feel
Haley looking at him. He realized that he shouldn’t have put Dickey on speaker,
but the man was his boss and called often enough. He owned, among other things,
the bar that Johnny ran, not to mention the building in which he and Haley lived.
So there really wasn’t any reason for him to think that this call would have
been anything other than business as usual.

“What’s that all
about?” Haley asked.

Johnny shrugged. “Haven’t
a clue.” He pocketed his phone, then looked at her so she could see that he was
as puzzled as she.

But also see that
he wasn’t hiding anything.

“That
was…abrupt.”

“Tell me about
it.”

Johnny realized
that, if they were danger, Dickey would have said something, would have told
Johnny that he was sending his son to pick them both up.

So maybe it
was
business as usual. Maybe Dickey was just having a bad day. Even rich and
powerful men had those, no?

Neither Haley nor
Johnny spoke for a moment.

“Guess you’d better
get dressed,” Haley said finally.

Johnny went into the bedroom, and Haley
moved to the living room. She sat sideways on the sill of one of the two tall
windows, leaning against the plastered window frame and looking down on Bedford
Avenue.

Williamsburg was
a “hipster” neighborhood — college kids, recent grads, young couples. Not unlike Khao San Road, the neighborhood in Bangkok that attracted an unusual
number of long-haired westerners in backpacks. A mile-long street lined with guesthouses
and hotels and clubs and shops, a sixties vibe but with a distinctly twenty-first-century
hustle.

It was there, in
the lobby of a small hotel where rooms cost just five dollars a night, that
Haley had first spotted Johnny.

And where, just
two weeks after that, men had come to kill her.

She had gone to
Thailand to further her study of Theravada Buddhism, which, in the most basic
of terms, called for “the destruction of the self”. Johnny had gone there,
she learned on their second date, to mourn the death of his father. But it was
more than simple mourning. He had begun his journey in Vietnam, where his
father had fought, then over a matter of months had traveled throughout
Southeast Asia. Roaming, his belongings in a backpack, hair long, bearded.
If
not for his eyes, she would have not looked twice at him.
As travelers often
did, he eventually made his way to the noise and frenzy that was Bangkok.

It had quickly become
obvious to her that he had gone there not so much to mourn as to lose himself,
to
flame out
and then disappear.

So they were there,
really, for the same reason. Well, almost.

She had
traveled there with a college friend who, she learned too late, had a secret
agenda — more than one, actually. He had claimed to only want friendship but of
course desired more than that, and waited till they had arrived before
revealing that hidden truth. This she had been able to handle.

But he had also
claimed to be a student of enlightenment, just as she was, and had offered to
travel with her for that reason. Shortly after arriving, however — actually,
immediately upon arriving — he contacted friends who had gone there ahead of
him and through them got involved in the city’s drug business, a decision that
ultimately put Haley’s life in danger.

As well as the
life of the expat she had recently met.

What happened
then, she could barely remember. Too fast, too much. Nothing shy of
hell
.
She had all but blacked out, was lucky in that regard. Johnny, not so much.

But the dreams
were occurring less often. It had been a while since she last woke to feel him
clutching her arm, a man wild with fear, ready to do what he had to do to
protect her.

She had gone to
the window now to watch the people passing below. This always eased her mind, helped
her feel safe.
A reminder that they had made it home
. But she found
herself also watching for a black town car. Every time they had gotten a visit
from Dickey McVicker — at the bar usually, but a few times here — he had arrived
in a black sedan. That vehicle would easily stand out in this neighborhood, so there
would be no missing it. And there was, really, no need for her to watch for it;
it would arrive when it arrived.

Still, she did.

Of course, it
wasn’t so much the vehicle that she was dreading but rather the man who always
drove it. She’d only seen him a few times, but a few times was enough. The
sight of him filled her veins with ice. Maybe it was the deference he showed
Johnny that bothered her. Or maybe it was that he reminded her in some way of
the men who had come for her, who had threatened to do terrible things to her,
who had looked at her with no hint of compassion.

This much she
could remember.

Johnny entered
the living room then, saving her from her thoughts. He was wearing jeans and a black
T-shirt and carrying black cowboy boots. His belt was loose, his jeans
unbuttoned. He set the boots on the floor, then tucked in his shirt, closed his
jeans, and tightened his belt.

He moved quickly.
Swiftness defined him. Her father and brother had both boxed, and Johnny had
that
thing
boxers had, that
manner
. Swift, but always calm,
always deliberate.
Efficient.
Even when the Saturday night crowd at the
bar was four deep, even as he was leading her by the hand out of a Bangkok
hotel…

“How long do you
think you’ll be?” she asked.

“Not sure.”

“I’ll open up the
bar if you don’t get back in time. Today’s delivery day for the kitchen.”

“I doubt I’ll be
that long.”

Haley nodded,
then turned her head and looked down on the street again. Johnny had sat down
on the folding chair and was pulling on his boots. He sensed her tension and
knew the reason for it.

“He’ll probably
just pull up and beep the horn,” he assured her. “You don’t have to watch for
him. He won’t come up.”