The Betrayer (13 page)

The name that Dickey McVicker had
written down on the slip of paper he had given Johnny was Charlie Atkins. It
was a name Johnny recognized. Atkins was Jeremy’s friend from years ago, back
before their father was killed, before Johnny had completely written his
brother off as a terminal screw-up.
The guy’s just not a Coyle
,
he’d
once told Cat.
Harsh, maybe, but Johnny saw things more simply back
then.

And it wasn’t like
he hadn’t given his kid brother every chance.

Everyone had.

When Jeremy first
began to disappear into the city for days at a time, it was always a safe bet
that he was with Atkins. And whenever Jeremy got into trouble, Atkins was never
too far away.

John Coyle Sr.
had looked into Atkins’s background, learned everything he could about the kid
and his family. Atkins was from wealth, had grown up on Central Park West, and
attended several prep schools in Connecticut — three, in total, after having
been quietly asked to leave the first two. But he managed to graduate and,
despite his mediocre grades and history as a troublemaker, got into Yale,
though most likely as a legacy — Atkins men had been going to Yale for
generations. However, Charlie Atkins had stayed for only two years before
dropping out. The last thing his father had told Johnny — John Coyle shared all
of this with his eldest son, like a commander would with his trusted sergeant —
was that Atkins was simply biding his time till his own father died, after
which he would, as the only child, inherit the family fortune.

The kid had everything,
Johnny thought as he entered Little Italy. Every advantage anyone could ever want,
could ever dream of having — and he had walked away from it. More than that, he
had pissed all over it.

Just like his kid
brother.

Maybe Atkins had been
a primary influence on Jeremy, inspiring him to follow the path of
self-destruction he’d been on since their mother had died.

But Johnny told
himself he didn’t care about that. He wasn’t here to understand his brother better,
or heal him. He was here to find him and either bring him back to Cat himself,
or to let Cat know where he was and then watch over him, silently, till she got
there.

And then Jeremy
would be her problem and Johnny would be done with it, would have fulfilled his
duty to what was left of his family and be free to go back to Haley and once
again burrow deep.

The bar, called Vincent’s, was on
Mulberry Street. Upon entering Johnny saw an elaborately framed print of van
Gogh’s
The Night Café
hanging on the wall behind the bar. He saw, too,
that the bar itself was an homage to that painting — pool table in the center
of a narrow room that was lit by yellow and red lights, though softer than in van
Gogh’s rendering, more somber and less harsh.

There was a good
crowd at the bar, and the dozen or so tables running the length of the opposite
wall were all full. Jazz was playing on the DMX — a woman singing in Moroccan-accented
French, accompanied by nylon-string guitar, double bass, and squeeze-box. Johnny
had studied French in both high school and college, but he couldn’t make out
the lyrics over the din of the crowd, not that he really tried.

He had only just
stepped through the door and taken a quick look around when a man seated on a
nearby stool stood and approached him. He wasn’t big — not Richter big, or
Dickey McVicker big. He was built, in fact, more like Johnny — fit, lean,
scrappy. He had a shaved head and pockmarked face, was maybe in his midthirties.
A gutter rat, quick and mean, Johnny concluded.

The man nodded to
Johnny, then told him to wait where he was and headed through the crowd toward
the back.

Obviously, the
man knew what Johnny looked like.

As Johnny watched
the man, he wondered about him, but only briefly. A few bad turns, Johnny
thought, and this could be me, watching the door at one of Dickey McVicker’s
places, waiting for my chance to prove myself to him through violence, and,
once I did, maybe move up a notch or two in his ranks.

If not for the
woman Johnny loved, he could have easily ended up here.

That is, if he
hadn’t flamed out first in Bangkok.

There but for
the grace of Haley go I.

The man reached
the very last table, at which sat Charlie Atkins — John Coyle’s info on Atkins
had included photographs. Leaning down, the man spoke to Atkins, who was with a
woman whose back was to Johnny. The woman turned and looked over her shoulder
at Johnny, staring at him for a moment. She was beautiful, had thick black hair
cut in a flapper’s bob, but she was young, probably too young to be in a bar.

The woman turned
to Atkins as the man with the pockmarked face straightened his back. Atkins
stood, touched the woman on the shoulder, and followed the man through the crowd to
the front of the bar.

“Let’s talk
upstairs,” Atkins said to Johnny.

Johnny followed
him outside, then through a street door just feet from the bar’s entrance. They
climbed a set of narrow stairs, at the top of which was an apartment that was
being used as storage space. Just like the apartment below Johnny’s. This one,
though, was filled with cases of liquor — many more cases than any legitimate busy
bar would need to keep on hand — and dozens of tables and stacks of chairs, as
well as kitchen appliances like a dishwasher, fryer, and industrial stove, covered
with sheets of clear plastic.

They stood just
inside the door. Atkins positioned himself by a front window. He kept glancing
down at the street below as if he were expecting someone.

A customer,
maybe. Or a cop. Or, for that matter, a rival or enemy, even.

Johnny wasn’t in
that life, but he knew the feeling.

“Dickey told me
you’re looking for Jeremy,” Atkins said.

He was maybe in
his midtwenties, just a few years older than Jeremy. Dressed in expensive
clothing — European jeans, zip-up sweater, motorcycle boots with absolutely no
wear on them. His hair was thick and recently cut.

Doing well for
himself, even without his family wealth.

“He seems to be
missing, yeah,” Johnny said.

“There’s a big
difference between ‘seems to be missing’ and actually missing.”

“He’s missing,”
Johnny said flatly.

Atkins shrugged. “I’m
afraid I haven’t talked to him in a while. Don’t know what help I could be.”

“How long is a
while?”

“A month, maybe. He
called me; we didn’t meet face-to-face. And before that, I hadn’t heard from
him in, I don’t know, close to a year.”

“What did he want?”

“Not drugs,
unfortunately.”

Johnny ignored
that. “What, then?”

Atkins paused,
was clearly enjoying the power he had, the importance his having knowledge that
someone else wanted gave him.

“He wanted to
know if I could put him in touch with somebody, set up a meeting.”

“With who?”

“Dickey.”

Johnny hid his
surprise. “What for?”

“He wouldn’t
say.”

“Did you set
something up?”

“He only asked me
if I could put him in touch with Dickey, didn’t actually ask me to do it.”

“Why not?”

Atkins shrugged. “Don’t
know. He said he’d call me back if he needed my help.”

“And that was the
last you heard from him.”

“Yeah.”

Johnny thought
about that, then said, “You were his dealer.”

“
One
of
his dealers, yeah. Friends first, of course, back in the old days, but we
drifted, as people do. You understand all about that, right? Anyway, after
that, whenever I heard from him, it was pretty much business.” Atkins paused. “He
was off drugs, though, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“So I’ve been
told.”

“You’re
skeptical. I get that.”

Johnny said
nothing.

“You know, Jeremy
talked about you a lot,” Atkins said. “Back when we used to hang out, when he
used to come to the city on the train and visit me. I think one of the things
he didn’t like about himself was that he wasn’t more like you.”

“He had every
chance to change.”

“You don’t
understand addiction, do you?”

“And you do,
because how else would you profit from it, right?”

Now Atkins said
nothing.

“Did Jeremy say
anything else when he called?” Johnny said finally.

“He said a lot. He
was pretty manic. Or he could have just been excited. Hard to tell.”

“Excited over
what?”

“He kept saying he
was in love.”

“With who?”

“Some married
woman who lives up in Chappaqua.”

“Did you get a
name?”

“He called her Beth.”

“Any last name?”

“No, but she was
decorating the restaurant he was working at. That’s how they met.”

“Do you know the
name of the restaurant?”

“If he said it, I
don’t remember.”

“Anything else?”

“Sure. We talked
for almost an hour, which I thought was kind of strange, considering we weren’t
really friends anymore. Actually, he wouldn’t shut up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. He
wouldn’t shut up. He went on about how he’d gone to some hypnotherapist to get
help kicking his addiction once and for all. I guess the hypnotherapist helped him
with that, and then they started doing this memory regression shit, and all of a
sudden, these repressed memories started coming up.”

“Memories of what?”

“Names, faces.” Atkins
paused, then shrugged and said, “What really happened the night your father was
killed.”

Johnny couldn’t
hide his reaction this time.

He said quickly, “What
did he say, exactly?”

“I pushed him for
more, and that’s when he finally shut up. I’m telling you, though, the guy was
manic. I think that’s the reason he told me as much as he did. That, and
because he was lonely. And I think he shut up when he did because he suddenly
got paranoid. Mania and paranoia — not a good combination, if you ask me.”

“Studied a lot of
psychology up there at Yale, did you?”

Atkins smiled at
that, though he clearly wasn’t amused. “Actually, I did, army man,” he said. “But
I used to be an addict, too. The weird thing about quitting is that you find
out the hard way that there’s a fine line between the clarity they promise you
and full-blown mania. They don’t warn you about that going in, but it’s one of
the many risks. And the problem is, if you
are
manic, you wouldn’t even
know it, you’d be the last one to realize it. You’d just think you’re seeing
everything exactly the way it is for the first time.” He paused. “I wouldn’t
believe a thing your brother told me. Not if he’s still in the condition he was
in when I talked to him. No matter how strongly he believes it. In fact, the stronger
he believes something, the more I’d tend to doubt, just to be safe. At least
until I could find out for sure that he’s right.”

Atkins looked
down on the sidewalk below and saw someone or something. Johnny looked, too,
but he did so too late; whatever had caught Atkins’s eye was gone.

Atkins stiffened.
It was a reaction Johnny knew well.

“I’ve got an
appointment,” he said. “Anything else?”

“You don’t by any
chance know the name of the hypnotherapist Jeremy went to?”

“No, but this
Beth women probably does.”

“Why do you say
that?”

“Apparently, it
was her idea that he go in the first place.” Atkins thought for a moment, then
said, “You know, Jeremy might not have been a big bad soldier like you and your
old man were, but he’s tough. The kid could fight. Particularly if someone
pissed him off. He didn’t care how much bigger a guy was, or how many friends
he had with him. That’s the advantage of having nothing to lose. Back in the
day, when we used to get into trouble, he always had my back. Always. You might
want to consider just letting him do whatever it is he’s doing. I mean, would
you even care if he got himself killed? You cut the kid loose years ago, right?
You wrote him off. What’s changed now? Is there big money at stake or
something?”

Johnny said nothing.

Atkins turned and
stepped to the stairs, then started down. Johnny walked to the top but stopped
there. Atkins was halfway down when Johnny finally called after him.

“Did you tell
Dickey that Jeremy had contacted you?”

Atkins stopped
and turned at the mention of Dickey’s name.

“Of course I did,”
Atkins said.

“Did you tell him
what Jeremy wanted?”

“I told him
everything I just told you. He’s fucking Big Dickey McVicker. You think I want
to end up dead? Or worse?”

Atkins continued
down the stairs and stepped through the door, but not without pausing first to
look through the small window and make sure the sidewalk beyond was clear.