The Betrayer (8 page)

“I’m just looking
at all the cute boys walking around,” she teased.

Johnny smiled. “Look
all you want, babe.”

“So cute. So…young.
How long will you be gone again?”

Johnny didn’t
take the bait. Still smiling, he said, “You don’t like Richter, I get that, but
the thing is, you’re not
supposed
to like him. That’s his job.”

“Well, he’s very
good at it.”

“It’s not a bad
thing to be good at your job, Hay. He’s not a bad guy, though. He’s actually kind
of funny.”

“Funny?”

“In his way.”

Johnny had the
first boot on and was reaching for the second. He had gotten in the habit of
wearing cowboy boots back when he needed to keep his ankle wrapped for the
support. Before that he’d always worn military boots, even as a boy, and all
the way through high school and college. Now he was just used to not having to
lace up. And a cowboy boot was a good place to hide weapons as well.

“You know,” he
said, “you should ask him about his name sometime.”

“What do you mean?”

“His name. Richter.
Ask if he was named after the Richter scale.”

“Why?”

“Just ask him
sometime, that’s all.”

“I think I’ll
pass.”

“Suit yourself.”

She looked out
the window again. Neither said anything for a moment. Johnny was pulling the
cuff of his jeans over the second boot when she spoke.

“He’s here,” she
announced.

Johnny stepped to
the window, the hard soles of his boots thumping on the floor. The town car had
pulled to a stop and was double-parked directly below. Instead of sounding the
horn, however, its driver emerged from behind the wheel.

Six foot three,
shaved head, sunglasses. Wearing a suit that both Haley and Johnny could have
fit into. He was Johnny’s age — the two had been friends in their youth, or at
least had known each other back then. Though Johnny wasn’t in any way
secretive, he didn’t talk much about his past, which suited Haley’s “we live in
the now” philosophy.

The man named Richter
was looking at a car that had pulled up behind the town car and, because the town
car was double-parked, was unable to pass. Richter glared at the driver, and not
even his aviator sunglasses could hide his look of menace and contempt.

The driver of the
blocked car didn’t beep, simply waited.

“I’ll call you
after,” Johnny said. “If it looks like it’s going to take longer than an hour,
I’ll break away and call you, anyway. Cool?”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Either way, I’ll
call you in an hour,” he insisted softly.

She nodded. “Thanks.”

He kissed her,
then said, “I love you, Hay.”

She smiled. “I
love you, too.”

“Lock up behind
me.”

“I will.”

She remained at
the window after he closed the door, listening as he moved down the stairs. Every
step in that stairwell was an echo that itself echoed. They were the only
occupants of this three-story building — the business space at street level was
for rent, or so the sign in the window claimed, and the apartment below theirs
was used for storage. This offered them a large degree of privacy, which Haley
enjoyed. She let out a guttural cry whenever Johnny made her come.

But more than
that, living in this empty building meant they didn’t have to listen to the
sounds of neighbors or patrons coming and going and wait for some factor, some
quality of those sounds, to tell them that what they were hearing was in fact
neighbors and patrons coming and going.

And not some
specter looking to kill them.

Haley watched as
Johnny stepped out onto the sidewalk and joined the man she feared. They didn’t
shake hands, simply nodded to each other, each clearly respectful of the other.

And yet, from
that giant man, a degree of deference.

Then Johnny
stepped toward the back of the sedan. Its rear door, opened by someone inside,
swung out, and Johnny nodded again to whoever had opened it.

This time he was
the one to show deference.

Haley could not
see from where she was seated, but who else could it have been?

Then, without
looking up, Johnny got into the sedan. The door was closed and he was driven
away.

Stepping to the
door, Haley flipped the two dead bolts and began what she hoped would be a
short wait for her Johnny to return.

“We might be closing the bar for a
few days,” McVicker said.

Johnny wasn’t at
all surprised by this; McVicker had his hands in a lot of different businesses,
some legit, others not so legit, others outright illegal, and at times the
man’s varied interests intersected.

One weekday night
last January, McVicker had told Johnny to close the bar early so a low-budget porn
film could be shot there. Maybe McVicker was in that business, or maybe he was
just doing someone a favor. Or maybe he, too, had been hit hard by the
recession and was maximizing profits by renting out the bar from midnight to
dawn. The two-man crew and three performers had begun arriving as Johnny and
Haley were doing a quick clean-up and reset, and by the time he and Haley were
ready to leave ten minutes later, the performers — two overly muscular males
and a female with a sleeve of tattoos bolder than Haley’s — had already
stripped down and were taking instructions from a young director wearing a
baseball cap and ponytail. Apparently, there was little time to waste. The men
were stroking themselves erect, and the lone woman, her hands on her hips, was listening
intently to what the director, speaking fast and with a thick Russian accent,
wanted to see unfold in the upcoming scene.

You’re at a
bar, getting revenge on your weakling boyfriend because he cheated on you…

On the silent cab
ride home, Haley had seemed both shocked and intrigued.

So for Johnny to
hear that his boss might be closing the bar wasn’t a surprise. And while as a
rule Johnny didn’t question Big Dickey McVicker about anything — the less
Johnny knew, the better — this decision affected the people who worked for him,
so he felt it was his duty to at least inquire.

“What’s going on?”

“We’ll put a sign
in the window that says we’re closed for renovations,” McVicker answered.

“But that’s not
why.”

“No. There’s
something you might need to do. And if it’s what I think it is, I’d consider it
a personal favor if you did it.”

Johnny glanced at
the rearview mirror, saw that Richter was looking at him, then turned his
attention back to McVicker.

He had made it
clear when he came to McVicker a year ago and asked for a job that he wanted
only legitimate work. Nothing to do with violence. A man like McVicker might
look at a guy like Johnny and see only one use for him. And yes, Johnny was
broke, had long-since burned through the money he had come into after his father’s
death, but he wasn’t so broke that he’d do
anything
.

More than all
that, he wanted nothing at all to do with anything that would separate him from
Haley. Life for Johnny had become as simple as that.

“It’s all right,”
McVicker said, as if reading Johnny’s mind. “It’s nothing to worry about. And it
might not take you a few days. But we should be prepared, just in case.”

Johnny was about
to point out that Haley could run the place with her eyes closed, and that he
could probably get one of the other bartenders to cover his shifts, so there
really wouldn’t be any need to close at all. And he wanted to mention that the
people who worked there — Johnny and Haley included — needed every cent they
could get their hands on, especially these days.

But again, McVicker
seemed to anticipate what was on Johnny’s mind and spoke before Johnny could.

“It would be
better if we closed up entirely for however long this takes you. I’ll keep
everyone on the payroll. And I’ll even compensate the bartenders for lost tips.
Does that sound fair to you?”

Johnny nodded. “Yeah.”

“Just write down
what you think they should get and I’ll see to it that they get it. But from
this moment on, until I tell you otherwise, the bar isn’t a concern of yours. Just
put it out of your mind. Do you understand?”

Again, Johnny
nodded. “Yeah.” McVicker was always reasonable — or at least always was with
Johnny. Still, none of what he’d just said alleviated Johnny’s concern over the
nature of what it was McVicker wanted him to do. If anything, it had heightened
it.

When Johnny had
told him last year that he needed a job for his girlfriend as well, and that they
both needed to be paid off the books, McVicker had said that wouldn’t be a
problem. And without even being asked, McVicker had offered them the apartment
on Bedford Avenue —
a safe-enough neighborhood
, he’d said, and by that
he meant two thirty-year-olds would blend in and not draw too much attention to
themselves.

It was obvious to
Johnny then that McVicker had understood that Johnny had come to him for
protection. He didn’t ask from what, and that was, for Johnny, an indication of
just how powerful the man was.

Whatever it was
Johnny was looking to hide from, it wasn’t anything McVicker, with his money
and his many connections, couldn’t handle.

For McVicker to
come to Johnny now meant that what he needed done was beyond the abilities of
any of the people at his disposal.

There was, as
Johnny saw it, no point in beating around the bush. He had promised Haley he’d
call her in an hour, and he’d already been away from her for ten minutes.

“Can you tell me
what it is you might need me to do?” he said.

“It’s not me,
actually, Johnny. It’s your sister.”

Johnny turned his
head to the right and glanced out the window. He determined quickly that Richter
was steering the town car toward the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Johnny asked
finally, “What would she need my help for?”

“She didn’t tell
me what she wanted, only that she needed to talk to you, in person.” McVicker paused,
then: “At least listen to what she has to say.”

Johnny was too
busy wondering if this could be in any way related to what had happened in
Thailand to really hear what McVicker was saying to him.

One of the men
who had come after Haley was an undercover Thai police officer — a corrupt
officer, there was no doubt about that, but a police officer nonetheless. The
friend she had gone to Bangkok with had been given a large amount of heroin to
deliver, then hadn’t delivered it. When he was eventually found and beaten by
these men, he claimed that Haley had betrayed him and taken the shipment for
herself. By the time those men tracked her down — found her and Johnny in her
hotel room — they weren’t, to say the least, in the best of moods.

If Bangkok
officials were looking for Johnny, and why wouldn’t they be, and if they had
tracked him to the States, which would have been easy enough to do, wouldn’t
protocol require that they contact the FBI?

But as estranged
as he and his sister were, Johnny couldn’t see her turning him in. So maybe she
wanted to warn him. Maybe she wasn’t directly involved but had gotten wind
somehow that Johnny was wanted, that negotiations between Thai officials and US
authorities were ongoing.

But if that were
the case, why arrange to meet with him like this? Why go to that trouble? Why
not just tip him off through McVicker and be done with it?

No need to stand
face-to-face, no need to be reminded by the sight of each other all that they’d
lost.

Johnny cleared
his mind of these questions, only to have another quickly arise.

“How did she know
you’d know where I was?”

“I don’t think
she did. She knew you were back, and probably hiding somewhere, but that’s
about it. Your father turned to me whenever he needed help, so it makes sense
that you might, too.”

“You didn’t tell
her where I was, right?”

“No. And she
didn’t ask. I just told her I’d bring you to meet them.”

“Them?”

“Donnie Fiermonte
is going to be with her.”

Johnny’s concern
deepened even more, but he said nothing.

Why the hell
would Fiermonte be there? The last thing Johnny wanted was to be in the company
of a state prosecutor and an FBI agent. It didn’t matter if they were family — one
actual family, the other as good as family. It didn’t matter that Fiermonte had
done all that he’d done since their father’s death.

Nothing mattered
but Haley
.

Johnny’s
instincts told him to jump out of the car right then, make it back to
Williamsburg as fast as he could, hitch a ride there, run there if he had to, just
get there and get Haley and get the hell out, take the money they had managed
to save and bolt.

The life they
lived — few possessions, no ties — was designed for this very reason. Haley
liked to think they were two students of Zen, and while that was true, it
wasn’t the whole truth.

Johnny thought of
her back at the apartment, the doors all locked, the building seemingly
unoccupied. They worked six nights a week, didn’t use the lights when they came
home at four or five in the morning, rarely turned them on at all, even on
their only night off. It was overkill, perhaps, but Johnny wasn’t taking any
chances. And Haley trusted his instincts, never questioned any of the
precautions he took, no matter how extreme or redundant they seemed. Living
simply was what mattered to her, and lying together in the dark on their one
night off, talking quietly, qualified as simple living to her.

A pair of cell
phones connected them now — Johnny’s was in his pocket, and Haley knew to keep
hers always nearby. They had three preplanned routes out of Williamsburg, each
route with its own code name, and three places where they were to meet should
they be apart when the time to run came.

All Johnny needed
to do, if he was out and Haley was home, was to call and speak the appropriate
code to her. If he couldn’t call, he would text it. One word, and she would put
any of their three plans into action.

All that was needed
then was for Johnny to get to the predetermined location, and together they
would make their escape.

He could imagine
nothing that would prevent him from doing that. Nothing that would stop him. He
would even kill McVicker and his son, if it came to that. McVicker was like an
uncle to him, Richter like a cousin. He’d known them both his whole life, had
seen them only a few times a year at picnics at the house in Ossining, but his
father had made it clear that these two were family.

But that was
then, this was now.

Johnny kept a small
KA-BAR knife hidden in his boot, and carried a retractable box cutter in the
back pocket of his jeans. Even now he was ready to do whatever needed to be
done, without hesitation or remorse.

But the instinct
to flee passed. He would see this through, learn from this meeting everything
he could. Better to be informed, know everything your enemy knew.

He was, after
all, trained for reconnaissance as well as for killing.

As he calmed his
mind, he realized just what a strange mix of people this gathering was going
be. Fiermonte, the prosecutor with whom his father had worked closely to bust up
organized crime, and McVicker, the shadowy underworld figure from whom his
father had gotten help his entire career — and who no doubt had benefited with
every crime boss that was eventually brought down.

If not for McVicker,
Johnny’s father would not have been able to establish any of the covers that
allowed him to do the work he’d done. More importantly, McVicker had kept his longtime
friend alive by helping him maintain those covers, and had done so, Johnny was
certain, at some risk to himself.

Of all these
people, Johnny trusted McVicker most.

Still, he didn’t
trust him implicitly, couldn’t, not while Haley’s well-being was at stake.

The town car
pulled onto the expressway but traveled along it for only a few moments. After
exiting, it made three turns, then pulled up to a warehouse in what was clearly
a failed industrial neighborhood. A man Johnny had never seen before was
standing outside a garage-style door, smoking a cigarette. When this man
spotted the town car, he tossed the cigarette away and quickly raised the overhead
door.

Johnny studied
the man as the town car passed into a loading bay. Then the door was pulled closed
behind them, the man remaining outside.

Richter stayed
behind the wheel as McVicker and Johnny exited the vehicle. McVicker led Johnny
toward a glass-enclosed office at the other end of the long dock.

Waiting inside
that office, visible through the tall panes of mesh-lined glass, were Cat and
Donnie Fiermonte.