The Betrayer (26 page)

She nodded. “Does Dickey employ anyone who fits that description?”

“Not that I’ve seen. But why would I? I just run a bar for him.”

Cat thought about all that. She got the sense, though, that her having survived an encounter with a hired killer altered the way her brother thought of her. It was something in the way he was looking at her.

They were, for now, and for the first time, on equal ground.

Two battered soldiers, the children of a soldier in a long line of soldiers.

“But I don’t understand something,” Cat said finally. “Why would Dickey send you to talk with Atkins in the first place if Atkins had information Dickey didn’t want shared with you?”

“That’s the wall we kept hitting. All I can come up with is Atkins screwed up.”

“If he did, it’s probably the last screwup he’ll make.”

Neither Johnny nor Cat spoke. The silence lingered for a moment. It was broken finally by Haley.

“Unless it’s something else,” she said.

Johnny looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“You told me it sounded as if Atkins had been trying to talk you out of looking for your brother and, at the same time, trying to talk you
into
not believing him if you did find him.” She looked at Cat. “And then you find him hours later, but he’s high on heroin, like maybe he’s back to using again.”

“What are you thinking, Hay?” Johnny said.

“What your sister just said, that someone wants your brother discredited.”

“What good would that do?” Cat said. “Jeremy’s repressed memories came out under hypnosis, and the sessions were all recorded. They were on a CD, which he’d hidden in a safe place. That’s why Elizabeth Hall was killed. She knew where the CD was. She was holding the key to it, literally. The
only
key, according to Jeremy.”

“So someone
is
after the recordings,” Haley said.

“Yeah.”

“And with those recordings gone for good, and Jeremy looking like an addict, who’d believe anything he said? Would his own brother and sister even believe him? You’re the only other people who might still care what happened to their father.”

Cat and Johnny looked at each other. Eventually a thought came to Johnny. “It would be safer to just kill Jeremy, though,” he said to Haley. Then he addressed Cat. “I mean, if he knows something someone wants kept secret, why not just kill him?”

“Because he’s the only one who knows the exact location of the CD,” Cat answered. “Elizabeth Hall was his fail-safe. She was the only other person who knew. If anything happened to him, she was to contact me.”

“Did she?”

“No,
I
found
her
. That code Jeremy left was to his cell phone account. There was a call to her landline, placed a few hours before he got shot at on Delancey. And there was a photo of her in his photo file.”

“How’d you recognize her?”

“I didn’t. Donnie did.”

“He knew her?”

“He’d seen her before, with Jeremy. At that restaurant he was working at.”

“She was Jeremy’s girlfriend?”

Cat shrugged. “They were close.” She paused, then: “She wore Chloé, like Mom used to.”

Johnny nodded. “Oh.”

“I think she was his only friend,” Cat said. “And it looks like I led McVicker’s hired killer right to her.”

“We still don’t know for sure the woman worked for McVicker.”

“Listen to what Jeremy has to say, and then try to tell me that.”

Johnny glanced briefly toward the closed doors. “So where is the CD now?” he asked Cat.

“All Jeremy told me was that it’s in a mailbox that one of those office-supply places rent out.”

“The key Elizabeth Hall had was to that mailbox?” Haley said.

“Yeah.”

“So does that mean whoever killed her has the key? And knows the box number and what store?”

Cat shook her head. “We don’t know. Maybe they just have the key.”

“Did they get try to the location of the box out of Jeremy when they had him?” Johnny asked. “When they were beating him?”

“According to him, they didn’t ask him a thing,” Cat said. “But maybe that’s why Dickey came after you. He wanted to use you as leverage. ‘Bring me the CD, Jeremy, or I’ll kill your brother.’”

“But that just brings us back to my same question,” Johnny said. “Why let him go?”

“They had to come up with a different plan when you and Haley got away. Maybe they thought if they let Jeremy go he would lead them to the CD.”

“That doesn’t feel right, Cat. They could have made him tell them where it was when they had him. But instead they beat him, shoot him up, and let him loose with his cell phone.”

“So maybe they wanted him to go running to someone,” Haley suggested.

Cat and Johnny looked at her.

Haley nodded toward Cat. “To you, maybe.”

Cat looked at Johnny. “Dickey said it himself. When we were trying to figure out why the guy on the surveillance tape had removed his suppressor before shooting at Jeremy. ‘To drive him to someone,’ he’d said.”

“I can’t imagine Dickey giving himself away like that,” Johnny said.

“He has always been bold, Johnny. Dodging charges has been as much sport as business for him. For all we know, that could have been a taunt for Donnie. The peace between them has always been an uneasy one.”

“But what would be gained by Jeremy coming to you?”

Cat shrugged. “Inflicting pain on someone is one thing. Your victim could hold out, or give you misinformation to fuck with you or waste time. But forcing someone to watch pain being inflicted on another is something else. Especially when it’s a loved one.” She paused. “You got away, and they couldn’t find you, so who else is left for them to use? I mean, that could explain why they didn’t bother to ask him anything when they had him.” Cat thought for a moment. “And it might also explain why Dickey’s bitch didn’t kill me.”

“What do you mean?”

“She attacked me in a way that wasn’t necessarily lethal. She was behind me, in the backseat of my car. She could have put a bullet in my head but slipped a garrote around my neck instead. And later on, when I was beating the crap out of her, someone came up from behind and knocked me out.”

“Who?”

“I didn’t see. But I wasn’t killed then, either. I came to and they were both gone. And you’d think I would have been killed, considering I’d gotten a good look at her face and could ID her, maybe even track her back to her employer.”

“This happened around the same time Dickey’s men came for Haley and me?” Johnny said.

“That’s how we timed it out.”

“But if Jeremy was supposed to come to you,” Haley said, “then doesn’t that mean, at best, whoever is behind all this has the key but not the location of the box? I mean, that could be why they let him go to begin with, right? They simply didn’t need him anymore.”

“The office-supply store has surveillance cameras,” Cat said. “Whoever walks in and opens the box will have his face seen and recorded by two cameras. The safest way for them to get the CD is for Jeremy to open the box himself and bring it back to them. And the only way I can see for them to get him to do that would be if they had me or Johnny.”

“Or both,” Haley said.

“Did you check Jeremy for tracking devices?” Johnny said quickly.

“Yes.”

“They can make transmitters pretty small these days, Cat. It could be in his clothes, or something in his pockets you wouldn’t think twice about. A pen, a lighter. Or it could be in his cell phone.”

“We left his phone in the apartment on West Tenth. I was going to destroy it, just in case, but then I figured if it was bugged, we might need to use it later. Plus, if anyone is tracking him, then they’ll think he’s still there.”

“What about his clothes?”

“Left them behind, too. He changed before we came here.”

Johnny seemed assured by this. And a little impressed, too. He thought for a moment, then said, “Have you told Fiermonte any of this?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“At first because Jeremy asked me not to. He didn’t want to risk anything getting back to Morris or Smith. And I didn’t call Donnie after I talked to Jeremy because he’s an officer of the court, he took an oath, and the less he knows about your involvement in this, the better for all of us. For now, anyway.”

Johnny nodded, then took a breath. Cat could see the effort doing so required.

Time was running out.

Her brother needed to make his escape while he still could.

“You should talk to Jeremy now,” Cat said. “And then you should go. You’ve done all you can. I’ll take care of things from here. If you need money, I can give it to you. I’ve got some of Dad’s left. And if there’s anything I can do to throw the cops off your scent, I promise I will.”

“You took an oath, too, Cat.”

“Fuck my oath. My career died when Daddy was killed. I’m the daughter of a traitor, remember? Anyway, we’re family, Johnny.” She smiled. “Whether you like it or not. That’s what matters.”

Johnny looked once more toward the closed doors.

“Keep an open mind,” Cat said. “Just this once. And go easy on him, okay? He’s trying to do his best. That’s all any of us can do, right? That’s all anyone can ask.”

These were, she knew, the last words their father had spoken to Johnny.

A cheap shot, maybe, but she would say or do anything at this point to bring her two brothers — as opposite as two men can be — together.

If only for a few precious minutes.

Johnny looked at Haley. She smiled and nodded.

After a moment Johnny stepped toward the French doors.

Jeremy heard the voices but not the words spoken. Regardless, he recognized his brother’s voice among those coming from beyond the doors.

He was on the tail end of his high, under the blankets to keep warm, the heavy drapes closed to keep out the harsh daylight. His mind and body were still drifting — a sensation he knew well, one he had once loved more than anything but now utterly despised.

The disconnect, the apathy, the sense of time just passing him by — he had no interest in any of that now. He craved, in fact, the opposite of those things, even if it meant feeling every cut on his face and bruise on his body.

Even if it meant being aware of every mistake he had ever made, past or present.

When he heard indications that the conversation was winding down — voices growing softer, pauses lasting just a little longer — he pulled off the blankets and moved to the edge of the bed. He was dressed, but Cat had taken off his socks and shoes and placed them on the floor. Moving slowly, he pulled on the socks, then the shoes.

He was rising to his feet when he heard the longest pause yet.

It was followed by the sound of footsteps approaching the doors.

Footsteps that could only belong to his brother Johnny.

Jeremy stood still and waited.

Johnny closed the door and, through the cave-like darkness, saw his kid brother’s beaten face.

Jeremy had been the good-looking one, resembling their mother the most, even more so than Cat. But whatever hints of their mother Jeremy’s face had once possessed — the nose and mouth and cheeks — had been replaced by dozens of fresh lacerations and grotesque bruises.

Even Jeremy’s eyes, which had held the same
something
as their mother’s, the same warmth, seemed void now, dark to the point of lifelessness.

The kid had been through hell, yes. He had been through hell and was still standing.

But that in itself didn’t convince Johnny that his brother had changed.

Johnny stayed by the door, breathing shallow breaths. Jeremy remained by the bed, his left eye all but closed by swelling, his right clotted with blotches of shimmering red.

“I heard three voices out there,” Jeremy said. “You and Cat and someone else.”

“My girlfriend.”

“What’s her name?”

Johnny didn’t answer at first.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Jeremy said.

Johnny supposed there wasn’t any reason not to. “Haley.”

“Cat said you guys maybe got into some trouble last night.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Jeremy shrugged off the rebuff. He stared at his brother for a moment, then said, “I thought I could do this. I wanted to do this. But I didn’t want to involve either of you until I was sure.”

“Do what exactly, Jeremy?”

“Expose him.”

“Dickey.”

“Yeah.”

“You believe he killed our father.”

“I know he was the one behind it. I was trying to prove it. Maybe I still can. With Cat’s help, and yours, I think we have a chance—”

“You think Dickey was behind it because you remembered things,” Johnny said. “Under hypnosis.”

“I heard stuff, yeah,” Jeremy said. “While I was in that apartment. I mean, my subconscious did. I was pretty high.”

Johnny nodded. “I remember. This was while Dickey’s man was watching you, while you were waiting for Dad to come and get you.”

“That’s right. Dickey’s man was a Russian named Gregorian.”

“You never mentioned his name before.”

“I didn’t remember it till last month.”

“It came out in the sessions.”

“Yeah.”

“What else came out?”

“A lot of gaps were filled in. Gaps in what I had been able to remember. You’d be surprised how much the subconscious retains. I even remembered some other names.”

Johnny thought about that for a moment. “Is that why Morris put you and Smith together?”

Jeremy nodded. “Smith knows Dickey’s operation better than anyone. If those names mean anything to anyone, it would be him.”

“But instead of helping you, he and another guy beat you. A Russian, according to Cat.”

“The Russian did the beating. Smith held me down later while I was being injected.”

Undercover operatives have probably done worse to maintain their covers, Johnny thought.

Their own father, no doubt, had.

“So why did you go to Morris in the first place?” Johnny asked. “Why not Cat or Donnie Fiermonte?”

“A few weeks after Dad was killed, when all that shit was coming out, I got in a fight and ended up getting busted for possession. I was brought to Morris’s precinct, and when he realized who I was, he pulled some strings and got me let go.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He had worked with Dad at some point, and he told me he didn’t believe any of the shit that was being said. Our father was the most standup guy he’d ever met. And bravest. He walked me out and got me a cab and told me that if I ever needed anything, I was supposed to call him.”

“It seems to me that an awful lot of trouble could have been avoided if you’d just gone to Cat.”

“She wouldn’t have believed me. And anyway, I wanted to do this on my own.”

“Why?”

Jeremy looked at him. “Can’t you guess?”

“To prove something to us.”

“No. To prove something to myself.” He paused, then: “I read about the training you went through, Johnny. Airborne school, Ranger school, the whole thing. I read about what Dad went through as an LRRP, and his father as a paratrooper, and his father in the First World War. I had no idea that the courses soldiers ran through when they’re training were called confidence courses. I’d always thought they were obstacle courses. But when I read that, it made sense to me. I realized that everything you’ve put yourself through was to build up your confidence. Your whole life has been one test after another. I was reading the memoir of one the men Granddad jumped into Normandy with, and the guy said that the one thing he carried with him that always made the difference was confidence — in himself, and in the man beside him. And each battle he survived, as scared as he was, added to his confidence, gave him reason to think that he just might survive the next one, too, and the one after that.”

“So this was your way of getting that. Confidence in yourself.”

“This was me doing what had to be done.”

“But you called Fiermonte. And Charlie Atkins.”

Johnny could tell that his brother was bothered by this, bothered that Johnny knew about that. “How did you know about Charlie?” Jeremy asked.

Johnny shrugged off the question. “My point is, if you wanted to do this on your own, why’d you call them?”

“Charlie was the only person I knew of who might be able to get me face-to-face with Dickey, but I didn’t know how to find him. So I called Fiermonte and asked him.”

“Fiermonte told you how to find Atkins.”

“Yeah.”

“He put you, a drug addict, in touch with a known drug dealer.”

“I told him I was clean and that I needed to make amends to the people I’ve wronged over the years.”

“And he bought that?”

“He seemed encouraged that I was in a twelve-step program.”

“You weren’t, though.”

Jeremy shook his head. “No. But the part about me being clean was true.”

“You kicked your addiction, just like that. After all these years.”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“I found someone who cared about me,” Jeremy said. “I know it sounds like bullshit, and I don’t expect you to understand, but suddenly I had something I’d never had before, and it made all the difference.”

“What was it you had?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Self-esteem. A reason not to fuck up anymore. All it took was Beth. All it took was the way she looked at me. The way no one really had. Not since Mom, anyway.”

Johnny thought about Jeremy’s closeness to their mother.

He thought, too, about his own transformation upon meeting Haley.

He didn’t want to get sidetracked, though, needed to keep his exhausted mind focused on what mattered, so he didn’t dwell on either memory and instead said, “So all Fiermonte knew was that you needed to contact Atkins to complete a step in your program.”

“Yeah. He wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told him the truth. And he would have tried to stop me. Or worse, get me put back in the hospital.”

“The thing is, Jeremy, I spoke to Fiermonte yesterday. He said you sounded kind of out there when you called him. Manic, even paranoid. Atkins told me pretty much the same thing.”

“It’s not true.”

“Then why would they both say that?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I was excited when I talked to Atkins, but not crazy.”

“I’ve seen you lost in your own little world before, with that faraway look in your eyes. You could have been that way when you talked to them and not been aware of it. You could have said things that you didn’t remember the next day.”

“Not a chance. No way.” Jeremy wasn’t getting angry at the implication, or agitated. He simply stood his ground. “Anyway, do I look that way to you now?” he said calmly. “Do I look manic?”

“No,” Johnny said flatly. “You look like someone coming down from a high. I’ve seen you that way before, too.”

“You can believe me or not believe me, Johnny. It’s up to you. Just like it’s up to you if you want to see me the way I am now. See me for what I’ve done in the past month, not for what I did when I was a fucked-up kid.”

Johnny considered that, then said, “So you told Charlie about your memories.”

“Yeah. I mean, I told him
about
them, not what they were.”

“And he was the only one you told.”

“Yeah. Except for Beth, of course.”

“And you told her everything.”

“Yes.”

“Why confide in Atkins, though? Even as little as you did.”

Jeremy shrugged. “He was like a brother to me once.” He thought for a moment, then said, “I guess maybe I was desperate for someone to believe me. Desperate to talk to someone other than Beth about it. But he seemed a little, I don’t know, too interested, so I shut up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I realized as I was talking to him that he was someone who might want to profit from any information I gave him. Which I’m guessing he did.”

Johnny nodded. “He claims he told Dickey everything you told him. And he told me I shouldn’t believe a word you said to me. He also suggested that I should just let you get yourself killed.”

“Like I said, he was a brother to me, once.”

“You two had a falling out.”

“He got tired of me and bailed. Like everybody does, sooner or later.”

Johnny said nothing to that.

“That’s another thing I’ve learned from my reading. Rangers have a code, don’t they? ‘Never leave a man behind.’ You train in pairs, don’t you, just to instill that? Dead or alive, everyone comes home.” Jeremy paused. “You left me behind, Johnny. Almost from the start. I didn’t measure up, I wasn’t enough like you, and you left me behind.”

Again, Johnny didn’t respond.

Jeremy let the silence linger, then said, “Look, I didn’t know who to trust, okay? Now that I know what I know. But I had to start somewhere. I had to do something. I would have made a deal with the devil if I had to. And the way it looked to me at the time, Morris was the only one I could turn to. The only one who didn’t look at me and see a complete fuck-up. But I was smart, Johnny. I read your Sun Tzu, I followed it to the letter as best I could. I took my time, talked to Morris for weeks over the phone before I finally agreed to meet with him. The only mistake I made was letting him pick the location of our first meeting.”

“The bar on the Lower East Side.”

Jeremy nodded. “A mistake I’ll never make again.”

“And you still trusted him, after the Russian showed up and took shots at you?”

“I had no choice but to let it play out. Otherwise, I would have lost a month of negotiation. I needed to meet with Smith. He was my only hope. And Morris might be as much of a patsy as I am.”

“Does he know what you remembered?”

“Some of it, but not all.”

“And Smith?”

“I told him even less. Mainly because I didn’t have time to tell him more. We met twice, and briefly both times.”

“You told your friend Beth everything, though, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And now Cat knows.”

Jeremy nodded.

“I don’t understand something, though,” Johnny said after a moment. “The therapist you went to, wouldn’t he have the original recordings?”

“He’s dead.”

Johnny cocked his head at that. “How?”

“A motel suicide.”

“When?”

“Last week. I didn’t find out till last night. Apparently, he’d been getting calls from someone for the past few days. Calls that made him nervous. His wife overheard one of his conversations, and it sounded to her like someone was trying to buy something from him.”

Johnny remembered one of the questions that ran through his mind as he was racing from his meeting with Atkins.

If Dickey knew of the woman in Chappaqua, if he knew about the recordings, why hadn’t he used his resources to find her, and through her, the hypnotherapist?

According to Atkins, he had told McVicker about Jeremy’s call a month ago, right after it had happened. And Jeremy’s therapist had been killed last week.

That left a span of three weeks.

And three weeks was plenty of time to negotiate the purchase of the originals, then orchestrate a hit.

Lure Jeremy’s therapist and kill him.

Just like our father.

Still, something prevented Johnny from taking that leap.

He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was…off.

He’d learned a long time ago to always trust his gut.

“Who told you about your therapist?” Johnny asked.

“Morris and Smith.”

“And so your CD is the only copy left.”

“I burned a backup onto my laptop, but it was smashed when my bike went down.”

“The information could still be on the hard drive.”

“It looked pretty bad to me.”

“I’m sure Cat knows a tech who can take a look for us. Where’s your laptop now?”

“In my backpack, behind the front desk. It’s under a fake name and room number. It should be safe.”

Something in Jeremy’s demeanor changed suddenly.

“Of course, that’s what I thought about the mailbox key,” he said.

His remorse was almost palpable. The death of their mother, when Jeremy was in his early teen years, had triggered a pattern of mania and depression that eventually led to a vicious spiral of self-destruction. He had been a sensitive, untested boy back in those days, and he had changed seemingly overnight.

What might the death of Elizabeth Hall trigger, Johnny wondered, now that Jeremy was a man out to prove himself?

A Coyle in a long line of Coyles.

After a moment of silence, Jeremy said, “Cat told me that Beth had been beaten.” His voice was soft, the words clearly difficult for him to speak. “By some woman, who then attacked Cat.”

Johnny nodded. He couldn’t help but recall the moment when he realized Haley was not in the apartment below theirs. Waiting for him, safe.

He recalled, too, the man in Thailand saying he was going to take Haley’s tattooed arm as a prize.

It was always there, this memory, ready to rise to the surface at any given moment.

But Johnny pushed it from his mind and focused on his kid brother. He could only imagine what the guy must be feeling.