The Barbed-Wire Kiss (25 page)

“I found the car. By accident. That’s all. If you’re trying to build something else out of that, you’re wasting your time. If I had anything to do with those two bodies …”

“No one said you did.”

“… I wouldn’t have been anywhere near that airport. And I certainly wouldn’t have involved the police in it.”

“Or Ray Washington.”

“Especially Ray.”

“Good point. Which leads me to something else I wanted to say. Ray was a good investigator, a real pro. He had his troubles with the organization, and I’m sure a lot of it had to do with the color of his skin, but he never let it affect his work. He broke a lot of cases in Major Crimes. You did too. No one respects him more than me. But he’s not a cop anymore. And neither are you. Don’t forget that. This case, it’s my problem now, and I have to take it by the numbers. It doesn’t matter if I want to cut someone a break or not. So all I can do is encourage you to do the smart thing.”

“Which is?”

“Come clean. Everything. You’re a good man who’s had some tough breaks—your wife, the shooting. Anything you or Ray got involved with here, I’m sure you had a reason for it. But the more I know, the more I can help look out for your interests.”

“Ray had nothing to do with any of this.”

“I’m not saying he did, I’m not saying he didn’t. I’m just telling you what my situation is. I’m in the dark right now, and that’s not a place I like to be. And when I’m there, I can’t help anyone else. I have to prioritize. And if you won’t cooperate with me, then your priority gets lower and lower.”

“I haven’t asked for your help. In any way.”

“True, but that could change. Whatever’s going on here, it’s not over. And looking at you, I’d say the situation’s deteriorating.”

“What happened to me had nothing to do with Cortez.”

“Okay, you got mugged. Happens all the time. Even to ex-cops. But look after yourself, because we’ll be talking again. I could arrest you right now, you know, take you out to Trenton, force you to make bond. It wouldn’t hold up, but it would ruin your week.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Two reasons. Number one, I don’t think you’re the bad guy here, even if you are holding out on me. Do you know what number two is?”

“You realize it’ll be a waste of time?”

Wesniak smiled, shook his head. “Your time, not mine. It wouldn’t bother me at all. No, the second reason is the simpler one: professional courtesy. Don’t mistake it for anything else.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” He got to his feet. “There now, I’ve said my piece and I’ve heard your side of it, as far as that goes. So I really have only one other thing to say.”

He moved toward the door.

“And that is that I hope you’ll reconsider. And I hope you’ll do it for the reasons we talked about. If you don’t, I guess I’ll just have to live with that. But you’ll have to live with it too. You’ve got one week.”

“What?”

“One week to give me that name. Seven days from today. If I don’t hear from you by then, we’ll be coming back, and we won’t be leaving alone.”

Eagleman opened the door.

“That’s not a threat,” Wesniak said, “that’s reality. You’re involved in this, Harry, one way or another. And now so am I. Pick your side.”

“Got a pen?” Ray asked.

Harry shifted the phone to his left ear, held it there with his shoulder.

“Hold on a sec.”

He sat down at the kitchen table, pulled the notebook toward him and flipped to a fresh page, picked up the stub of pencil.

“Ready.”

He wrote as he listened. The Jeep was registered to Lester James Wiley at an address in Manasquan. The Buick was owned by a company called Christo Waste Hauling on Richmond Parkway in Staten Island.

“I’m guessing what this is about,” Ray said, “but don’t do anything until we’ve had a chance to talk about it, okay? Promise me that.”

“I’m just getting some information together. I’m in no shape to be doing much of anything else just yet.”

“It feels different, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“When you’re a civilian. You know what I’m talking about.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’d been away from the job so long … I guess maybe I started to look at things differently.”

“And then all this shit happened and now you feel like you’re right back in it, but it’s not the same anymore, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Why do you think I applied for my license after sitting on my ass at my brother-in-law’s mortgage company for a year? I missed it. I missed the Life.”

“I left the job because I was sick of it. Why would I miss it?”

“Because you know too much. You’ve seen the world the way it really is, the way it operates. And it’s a scary place when you don’t have the badge or the gun or the attitude anymore. But you can’t go back to pretending it’s some other way.”

“When you look at it like that, it’s not much of a world, is it?”

“Maybe not. But it’s ours.”

Later, he dragged the phone book from a drawer, found numbers for a rental car agency and a cab company in Freehold. He made two phone calls, then tore the page from the notebook and went out onto the porch to wait. He sat there, looked at the names and addresses he’d written down.

It was a start.

The next morning, he called the number Bobby had left him. A man answered and asked him to hang on. A few moments later, Bobby came on the line.

“It’s done,” Harry said.

“I was starting to get worried about you, slick. You weren’t calling me back. Are you all right?”

“I got busy. How’s everything down there?”

“Fine. We’re fine. What happened? You give him the money?”

“Yeah, I gave it to him. We’re settled. But it’s best if you stay down there a while.”

“I was planning on it. Then it’s over?”

“It’s over. You’re quits with him.”

“Hard to believe, after all this.”

“Believe it.”

“And everything went okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I can’t talk much now. I just wanted to let you know it was done. I’ll call you later in the week, update you on what’s going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s still a couple things I want to look into.”

“I thought you said it was over?”

“It is,” he said. “For you.”

•  •  •

At noon, he was parked a half block from her house, beneath a stand of trees on the opposite side of the street. The driveway was empty, the garage door closed.

The car he’d rented was a midnight blue two-door Saturn with tinted windows. He wore sunglasses and a baseball cap, had tilted the seat back enough so that he was low in the car but could still watch the house.

He took off the glasses and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. The bruises below his eyes had lost their purple sheen, the swelling gone for good. He’d taken the tape from his nose, but the flesh there was still red, slightly puffy. Whenever he touched it he felt a warm flow of pain back through his sinuses.

At ten after one, Wiley’s Jeep turned down the street. Harry sank lower as it went past him and pulled up into the driveway. Wiley got out, went to the front door, rang the bell. After a moment, the door opened and he went in.

He’d brought the notebook and a pen from the house. He opened the notebook on his leg, braced his cast across the top of the pad, and wrote.

He left it unsigned, tore the page from the book, folded it, and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

At one-thirty, the garage door started to roll up. The Lexus backed out past the Jeep, and he could see the BMW parked inside. When the Lexus pulled onto the street, he could see Dunleavy at the wheel, Fallon beside him, the backseat empty. Neither of them looked at the Saturn as they drove past. The garage door rolled shut again.

He started the engine, drove three blocks, and found a pay phone at a gas station. He dialed her cell phone, let it ring four times, and then a computer-generated voice mail message picked up. He clicked off.

There was a mall about ten minutes away. He went to four stores before he found what he was looking for, a brown leather cigarette case that looked enough like hers to pass a quick inspection. He stopped at a 7-Eleven, bought a pack of Marlboro Lights, opened it, and took three of them out. He rolled the note into a tube, slid it down into the pack.

He drove back to the house, parked beneath the same trees. The Jeep was still there. He got out of the car, crossed the street. There was a loose, shoulder-high hedge separating Fallon’s property from the house next door. He stepped over a stone wall and moved along the hedge until he reached the garage, then pushed through an opening to the other side. He waited there, out of sight of both houses, listening. Then he turned the corner of the garage, looked into the backyard.

The French doors were closed, but the curtains in one of them were pulled aside. It would have to do. He lobbed the cigarette case so that it fell short of the door, landing on the flagstones in full view.

He moved back around the garage, pushed through the hedge again. Somewhere inside the neighbor’s house, a dog began to bark. He crossed the stone wall and walked back to his car.

At ten p.m., the phone rang.

“Harry?”

“Where are you calling from?”

“A pay phone. I snuck out. He’s down at the restaurant. Lester’s here but he’s sound asleep on the couch.”

“Be careful. You got my note?”

“Yes. Lester saw the case, brought it in. He thought it was mine.”

“Are you okay?”

“Edward showed me pictures …”

“It looked worse than it is. I’m all right.”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

He could hear the tears in her voice.

“Has he hurt you?” he said.

“What happened to you? Have you been to a doctor? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. You didn’t answer me. Has he hurt you?”

“It’s you I’m worried about, Harry. Those photos … It looked like they’d killed you.”

“They didn’t. You should get back to the house.”

“Edward took my cell phone. I don’t know where it is. Whenever he goes out, he has Lester here watching me. I don’t know what to do or what …”

“Get hold of yourself.”

“How did he know?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe he had someone following you. I don’t know.”

“Oh, God. I should never have brought you into this. I should never have …”

“Stop it. Has he threatened you?”

“No. He just said I should forget about you because you weren’t coming back, that you’d learned your lesson. What did he mean? What did he do to you?”

“Don’t worry about that for now. Go back to the house. I’ll explain everything later. What’s important now is that he thinks I’m out of your life. Let him keep thinking that. I’ll get a message to you somehow.”

“Harry, I love you.”

It took him by surprise.

“I love you,” he said. “And don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

Wiley’s house was a bungalow in a neighborhood of bungalows, a quarter mile from the ocean. Harry had driven past it twice earlier that day to get a feel for the surrounding area. Summer rentals mostly, long blocks of sandy yards and no trees.

Wiley’s Jeep had been in the driveway the first time he’d driven by, was gone the second. At nine p.m., he’d used a pay phone to call the Rip Tide, asked for him. When Wiley came on the line, he’d punched numbers in at random and hung up. Now, four hours later, the driveway was still empty, the house dark.

He turned down a side street, parked behind an abandoned bait shop he’d seen earlier. The windows were boarded, the lot dark. He got out of the car, locked it, walked back through the silent neighborhood.

He cut through two backyards, ducked under a clothesline hung with swimsuits and towels, came up behind Wiley’s house. There were two windows back there, both about a foot over his head. He reached up to the first one, felt the heavy glass of a storm window. The second held an air conditioner. The bedroom.

He circled the house. On the north side, toward the front, was another window. When he reached, he felt screen beneath his fingers.

He took a red recycling bucket from the side of the house, overturned it beneath the window, and climbed up. He was looking into a living room, lit only by the glow of the streetlight. He could see a couch, a coffee table, a TV, a short hallway that led into the kitchen. The kitchen table had been pushed against the wall to make room for a weight bench. There was a fully loaded barbell on the bench, scattered weights on the floor around it. Beyond was the open bedroom door.

He took out his pocket knife, thumbed open the blade, and sliced two small holes in the screen above where he estimated the thumb pushes would be. He put the knife away, worked fingers inside one hole, pulled the thumb push until the spring released, then did the other. With the screen loose in the frame, he tilted it, slid the tabs from the runners, and eased it out of the window toward him. He lowered it until it was only inches above the ground, then let it drop almost silently.

With his fingertips, he gripped the sash, pulled it down and shut. It slid easily in its frame, would open just as easily when he pushed up.

He climbed down, carried the screen and the bucket to the rear of the house, set them in the shadows. There was a small, prefab toolshed in the next yard, a pile of stacked cinder blocks behind it. It was as good a place as any. He climbed up on the cinder blocks, his back against the rear of the shed. He could hear big band music playing softly from an open window in the house next door. He closed his eyes and sat back to wait.

The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty. Bottle-blonde, tight jeans, purple blouse. He watched her walk carefully on high heels from the Jeep to the side door of the house, Wiley close behind her. He put an arm around her shoulder, whispered something, and she giggled as he unlocked the door and led her in.

He looked at his watch; one forty-five. The houses on both sides were dark. He slid from the cinder blocks, dusted off his jeans. Lights went on in the bungalow.