HIS NAME WAS Lamar, and Lamar was scared.
It was clear in the way Lamar’s hands shook as he brought the can of soda to his lips, in the way the soda slopped out of his mouth as he tried to drink, the way his jaw trembled as he repeated his improbable story. Ramirez thought the fear was a pretty good indication of guilt. It wouldn’t take much, she knew, to push him into abandoning his cock-and-bull story and signing a confession that would close the case. But Henderson had spent so much time in these rooms with kids who showed nothing but contempt for cops, for their crimes, for the prisons they were headed to, nothing but contempt for themselves, that in Lamar’s fear he saw possibilities for some sort of redemption. Ramirez would consider Henderson’s thoughts about redemption a sign of muddleheaded weakness arising from his severe case of old age. Henderson considered it his only reason for still being a cop.
“Where do you keep your drugs, Lamar?” said Henderson, who was taking the lead in the questioning and kept his voice calm and soft. Ramirez sat with her chair leaning against the wall and glowered.
“I told you, man, I don’t do drugs.”
“Remember that cup you peed in when they picked you up?” said
Ramirez with a sneer. “Well, that says you’re a liar.”
“What they find?” said Lamar.
“Some sticky icky,” said Ramirez.
“Hell, that ain’t drugs. I just took a hit off a buddy’s blunt last
night. But I ain’t got nothing at the house, if that’s what you’re asking. My moms would kill me she finds that crap. Truth is, sad as it is to admit, I don’t got the money for it.”
“The pawnshop said you got seventy-five for the watch,” said Henderson. “What did you spend it on?”
“Food.”
“Where?”
“Most I gave to my moms so she can feed my brother. But I kept enough for a rack from Ron’s and some mac and cheese.”
“You get it extra hot?”
“What are you, crazy? Ron’s is hot enough, just regular. The extra will burn a hole through the back of your throat.”
“You got that right,” said Henderson. “So let’s go over it again.”
“I told you four times already.”
“Then let’s do five.”
“I was out walking that night.”
“What night?”
“I don’t know when, a week or so ago. I was out walking.”
“Looking for what?”
“Anything. Is that a crime? I was out, is all. And I saw this pack come toward me on the street that I didn’t want anything to do with, account of I recognized one of them idiots, and he and me we don’t get along.”
“What’s his name?”
“Danny something, I don’t know. He’s big and he’s ugly, you want a description. So when I passed one of them deserted lots, I ducked into it so as to avoid his ass.”
“Where exactly?”
“I don’t remember. It was, like, west of Sixteenth on Montrose or something. I didn’t care where it was, I just wanted to get away. He’s got this nose, man, like a baked potato that exploded in the oven. You know what I mean? And so as he passed by on the street with his boys, I kind of slunk my way into one of them corners that was darker than the rest, and that’s where I found it.”
“Found what exactly?”
“I told you. It was a box, a white box with handles cut into the sides, and the stuff was in there.”
“The box we found in your room?”
“The same.”
“And what was in there again?”
“You know, the watch that I pawned. And then the stuff you found, that computer screen and the gun. There were a couple other screens that I passed out to some friends in exchange for gabbling onto their Internet, because my connection is, like, nonexistent. I thought we was supposed to be getting it free, that’s what the mayor said, but I got nothing.”
“We’ll be sure to let him know,” said Ramirez.
“Why didn’t you pawn the cuff link when you pawned the watch?” said Henderson.
“Cuff link? What cuff link? I don’t wear no cuff link.”
“The cuff link you still had on you. There were two, but you lost the one, right?”
“What are you talking about cuff links for?”
“No cuff links?”
“Nah, man. What would I be doing with something beat like that?” “Maybe one of your other jobs.”
“I told you, I don’t do no jobs. And if I did do jobs, I wouldn’t be stealing no cuff link.”
“So then let’s talk about the gun. You use the gun?”
“Nah, man, that crap scares the piss out of me.”
“So why didn’t you pawn it with the watch?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is that your best answer, that you don’t know?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were going to use it against that Danny character with the potato nose, weren’t you?” said Ramirez, as her chair slapped down on its front legs with a crack.
“Nah, I don’t know. Protection, maybe.”
“Use it on him like you used it on the old man,” said Ramirez, who stood and started walking toward Lamar.
“What old man?”
“Don’t be cute, baby,” she said. “You know just what old man I’m talking about. How are we going to help you if you don’t help us?”
“I’m trying to help.”
“You didn’t mean to shoot him, we know that,” said Ramirez, leaning forward now with her knuckles on the table so that she was peering down at Lamar with angry eyes. “The door was open, you slipped in, saw all that stuff, and started filling a box. Then the old man appeared. You panicked, you drew the gun, pointed it, the thing went off. It happens, and it was an accident, and we can help you get past it.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Then you better tell us what happened, and you better tell us quick, before we take a dimmer view of things.”
“I found the box.”
“Lamar,” said Ramirez, her voice loud now, and fast. “Baby. You keep playing it like that, we’re going to have no choice but to figure you did it on purpose.”
“But I didn’t.”
“That you went in there intending to shoot that man.”
“I didn’t go there to shoot nobody.”
“Bang you down for first degree. Twenty years. Or more. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Help us help you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Yes, you do. We told you already. It was an accident, you didn’t mean it. That’s what you need to tell us. That’s the only way out for you. Other than that, it’s a needle in the arm, boy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on, baby, you know what I’m talking about. It’s why you’re lying to us.”
“I’m not.”
“Another one right there. Right there, you pathetic loser.”
“Take a minute, Lamar,” said Henderson, who stood now and stepped between the cowering Lamar and Ramirez, whose fists were balled.
Henderson faced Ramirez and stared for a moment, before she spun on her heels and stormed out the door. Then he turned to Lamar and put a hand on Lamar’s shoulder. He could feel the bones beneath his fingers shaking.
“Did it happen like that, Lamar?” said Henderson. “Did the gun go off like she said?”
“I told you. I found the box.”
“That’s a little hard to believe, son. And if we don’t believe it, and we want to help you, how’s a jury going to believe it? Stay here for a bit and think on it. We’ll be back.”
From the other side of the mirror, Henderson and Ramirez stood next to each other and watched the boy. Lamar wiped his eyes with his palm, his nose with the back of his hand. The shaking was worse now, the fear had clutched tight at his heart, and all pretense of faking it was gone. As Ramirez stared through the glass, she could see the ghost of her own reflection in the mirror superimposed on the boy’s scared face. Her face was twisted with a strange and ugly expression that she didn’t recognize and didn’t like.
“Another ten minutes and it would have been done,” said Ramirez. “He would have signed
Mein Kampf
if I put it in front of him.”
“He just might have.”
“Why’d you stop me?”
“Because I didn’t want that kid saying something he’d spend the rest of his life regretting.”
“That’s our job, isn’t it?”
“Not if we spend the rest of our lives regretting it, too.”
“He already pretty much said he didn’t mean to kill Toth, that it was an accident.”
“He came close.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he found a box.”
They stood side by side and stared at Lamar as the kid tried again to drink from the soda. The stuff was flying from the can before it was halfway to his lips.
“That would mean our killer was clever enough to stage the crime scene,” said Ramirez, “and then place the gun and the watch and the computer screens in a box on some deserted lot so that some chump would find them, hock something, and take the fall.”
“Seems a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it?”
“It would also mean that this isn’t just a simple killing but probably something tied to the fire, to that file cabinet in Byrne’s basement, and maybe to the questionable circumstances of Liam Byrne’s death.”
“It’s enough to give me a damn headache,” said Henderson.
“What would your boy Occam say about all that?”
“He’d say Lamar is it.”
Ramirez thought about it for a moment, took a deep breath. “I owe you, old man.”
“What for?”
“For pulling me out of there.”
Just then there was a knock on the door, and a uniform poked her head inside. “Detective Ramirez, there’s a lawyer here to see you.”
“You get a name?”
“She said her name was Shin, Katie Shin. Just like that. And she said she had a message for you from some Kyle Byrne.”
AT PONZIO’S, an overblown New Jersey diner with a false stone front and overcooked peas, Kyle Byrne stared into the very face of God. Or the closest thing he had going, albeit one wiping a splotch of Hellmann’s from his lower lip with his thumb.
“Now, when you meet with this walking, talking piece of corruption,” said Liam Byrne, “you need come at him from an angle, keep him off balance.”
Kyle listlessly swirled a french fry in a pool of ketchup and pretended to listen, more interested in the features of the face in front of him than in the plots and plans coming out of its mouth. Through the years Kyle had guarded the mental picture of his father so religiously that the image had lost its flesh and bone and become something almost holy. He was the creator, who had formed, through both his genes and his absence, almost the whole of Kyle’s identity. And now, as the creator sat across from Kyle at this desultory diner, stuffing his face with a turkey club on white with extra mayonnaise, the disappointment was palpable.
“We can’t let him know what we’re really after, see?” said his father. “If he cottons on to the fact that we’re trying to destroy him utterly, he’ll disappear. So we give him something he can lunge for, something that he thinks will give him an out. We give him a feint, like a football running back. That’s the position you played, wasn’t it?”
“How would you know?”
“I kept track, boyo. Every week in San Bernardino, I’d gather up the Philadelphia papers and see what I was missing. There you were on the high-school sports page in living color. I couldn’t have been prouder.”
No matter how much Kyle mythologized it in his memory, no matter how much he exalted it in recollection, there was nothing spiritual about the face in front of him now. In the bright and unrelenting light of Ponzio’s, his father looked realer than real, not to mention old as hell. A nd as common as t he burger on Kyle’s plate. Kyle wondered what question he would ask God if He were seated across from him at Ponzio’s.
“How’d you meet my mother?” he said finally.
Liam Byrne looked at his son with a narrowed eye, as if he spotted the peril in the question, and then put down his sandwich.
“She came to work at the firm,” he said softly. “Laszlo hired her, actually. As a secretary. There was something about her that I spotted right off.”
“What exactly?”
“It’s hard to say. I suppose it was that calm implacability of hers. It is impossible to overstate how attractive that is to someone like me. Of course she was a beautiful woman, but she seemed to be challenging me to try to get through her walls. And I could never resist a good challenge.”
The old man’s crooked smile of remembrance struck a chord of anger in Kyle. “So you charged the ramparts. How old was she then?”
“She was old enough to know better. We both were. But once it began, we couldn’t help ourselves. I suppose that meant she saw something in me, too.”
“Like what?”
“The same charm I passed on to you, maybe.”
“So you charmed the pants off her.”
“Ah, boyo, we charmed each other. Your mother was a special woman. Stronger than ever I was, that’s for sure. She knew her mind and acted upon it. And I won’t be giving away any state secrets to say that I loved her mightily.”
“Not enough to marry her.”
“Well, of course, I was married already. To my wife, you see. An interesting woman in her own right. I saw her, actually, just a day before the fire. After you sent your friend inside.”
“You saw her?”
“Yes, though she didn’t see me. It was quite the emotional experience, I must admit. She’s grown old. It happens, though a disappointment nevertheless. And she’s married again, to an old sot too decrepit to be unfaithful. I suppose that is what she wanted all those fallow years with me.”
“Did you say hello?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t disrupt her current happiness for anything. Whatever we were together in the past, and we were many things, we weren’t happy.”
“If you weren’t happy in your marriage,” said Kyle, “and if you loved my mother like you said, why didn’t you leave your wife?”
“Well, we were married in the church, you see. And in those days it wasn’t always so easy to—”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Liam looked up sharply at the rebuke in his son’s voice. “Your mother understood.”
“She was a good sport, you mean.”
“Here we are, in the eternal struggle, father and son battling over the affections of the mother. Oedipus redux. It would be unnatural any other way. But your mother, boyo, she doesn’t need your defending. She never needed anyone. It’s what attracted me to her in the first place. To be the center of her world seemed a rare thing, worth more than diamonds. But it’s hard to sustain a relationship with someone so self-contained. I tried, yes. For a bit, after you were born, I even moved in, did you know that?”
“She told me.”
“Yes. An interesting time. But it didn’t work. She found someone else to love, someone else to stand at the center. She pushed me away for another.”
“Go to hell.”
“No, son, it’s true.”
“Who, then? Who did my mother fall in love with?”
“You don’t know?”
“No. I don’t.”
“It was you. We don’t need to battle, because you are already triumphant. She loved you so much there was no room left for me. She loved you, boyo.”
“You don’t need to tell me that.”
“Of course I don’t. That’s another thing we have in common. We both loved your mother and were loved by her, in succession, I think. But you won out.”
“And you went back to your wife.”
“She took me back, yes. We had a difficult relationship, but we both gave each other things that we needed. So she put away her anger and took me back. But there were conditions, which made it hard for me to get away to see you.”
“I missed you all the time,” said Kyle, the words slipping out unbidden, as if spoken by the twelve-year-old kid still inside him.
“I know,” said Liam Byrne. “It was a difficult thing for me to stay away, more difficult than you could imagine. I understand you still have issues with your old man. I deserted you, not once but twice. But I am your father, and you are in a time of dire need, and here I am. I saved you once this morning, and we’ll work through the rest of it together. Some of that must matter, don’t you think?”
Kyle stared at his father and wondered why all their conversations turned into him whining and his father explaining. They were caught in an eternal cycle of Kyle’s longing and disappointment. But maybe it was time to stop fighting and doubting and trying to get the apology he seemed so desperately to need. Maybe it was time just to accept that his father was here, now, and to see what the future held for the two of them. Forgiveness? Atonement? Redemption? Love? It was all possible, wasn’t it, as long as Kyle’s father was still sitting in front of him at Ponzio’s?
“I suppose,” said Kyle.
“Good. Now can we get back to the matter at hand before the forces arrayed on either side lop off our heads?”
“Sure.”
“We’ll talk more about dealing with the senator later. I have plans. Definite plans. But I didn’t like what happened this morning, didn’t like it at all. I’m not willing to leave you at the mercy of Sorrentino, that Italian degenerate. The senator can wait until tomorrow. It’s time we take care of my old partner now.”
“Why don’t we just give him the file? It’s what he wants, and it will take him off my back and screw Truscott at the same time.”
“Because he is a scoundrel of the worst stripe,” said Liam. “Because he will care nothing about caging a criminal but instead will trade it for cash and include you in the bargain. You’ll never be safe if he has the file, and that I can’t allow. No, we have to take him out of the picture once and for all.”
“How?”
“Ahh, that’s the question. How indeed? But I know for certain we need to go right at him. There is no use waiting around for him to act. Always keep the initiative, always stay one step ahead. I learned in law that if I waited for the other side’s filings, I’d get buried.”
Just then Liam Byrne’s features froze in startled recognition of someone in the restaurant. He quickly averted his face as an older man in a sweater, hunched and limping, shuffled by. And then the old man stopped, and then the old man turned around. His face was a haggard droop of flesh, but his eyes were curiously alert as they stared at the back of Liam Byrne’s head.
“Liam?” said the old man.
“No, I’m sorry,” said Liam Byrne, without turning around. “My name’s Marvin.”
“Did you have a brother named Liam? Or a cousin?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but you’re the spitting image of someone I used to know.”
Liam Byrne twisted in the booth to stare straight at the man and give a warm, untroubled smile. “Handsome fellow, I suppose,” said Liam in a broad midwestern accent.
“He would have been,” said the man, “if he hadn’t died many years ago. It was the strangest thing, though, because I could have sworn you were he.” The old man turned to look at Kyle, blinked twice as if in recognition, looked again at Liam. “It’s uncanny.”
“One thing we know about the world,” said Liam, turned back now and winking at Kyle, “is that coincidences happen.”
“Yes, I suppose,” said the old man, his face screwed up in puzzlement. “I’m sorry to disturb your dinner.”
“Not a problem,” said Liam, “not a problem at all. I’m often mistaken for the dead.”
When the old man had walked on and sat at his table at the far end of the row, Liam let out a breath.
“That was close,” he said. “We ate in New Jersey so I wouldn’t be recognized, and then Johnstone has to walk into this very restaurant. I had a number of cases with him back in the day. He worked for the insurance companies. A moral failing, if you ask me. But even as he recognized me right off, I barely recognized him at all. He is ancient.”
“It happens,” said Kyle flatly.
“But his face did get pale, didn’t it?” said Liam, starting to laugh. “I could see the blood rush away as he thought he recognized me. Like he had seen a ghost.”
“He had, hadn’t he?” said Kyle.
“Yes,” said Liam, who reached up and scratched at his mop of gray hair, as if scratching out an idea. “Indeed he had.”