Brothers and Bones (18 page)

I would have, and I doubted he even knew about the angry message I’d left on Angel’s answering machine earlier. That turned out to be a terrific idea. The noose was getting tighter.

I said, “After the charity event tonight, if Angel disappears, they’ll still think I had something to do with it.”

“They’ve got nothing without a body. You’ll be inconvenienced, questioned, embarrassed maybe, but you’ll come out fine. Small price to pay.”

Easy for him to say.

“Quit your fucking stalling,” he said. “Give us what we need and Angel disappears, this never happened, and you can go on with your life. In fact, you be a good boy and do what you’re told and maybe we’ll even give you something extra.”

“Yeah, and what’s that? A wedgie? Herpes?”

The killer almost seemed to smile at that. “Answers. We’ll give you answers. About your brother.”

At the mention of Jake, I burned. This asshole was probably involved—
very
involved—in Jake’s disappearance. I wished to God the gun was back in my hand and not the killer’s pocket, and that it had real bullets. I wouldn’t have hesitated a fraction of an instant. I would have shot the bastard in the knees, then the elbows, then blown his fingers off. I would have shot off piece after piece until I got all my answers. And if that didn’t work, I’d try out his hammer and nails and see what they got me.

“What do you know about what happened to Jake?” I asked.

“All in good time, Charlie. Are you with us?”

I wanted to bring this man down. I wanted to bring the rest of the “they” down. I wanted to know what happened to Jake and, if “they” were responsible, I wanted to make sure “they” paid dearly.

The killer started to walk back toward my desk again.

“The cops are only three digits away,” he said. “Everything you worked for, your career, your girlfriend…” I stiffened at that. He smiled. “Everything gone. Instead, disgrace, prison, and all the bad shit prison brings. It’s your choice.”

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think straight. My life seemed over. I had no idea what tape I was supposed to be looking for, let alone where to look. And they wanted me to hand Bonz over to them, for God only knew what terrible reason. And even if I wanted to do so, how could I? I didn’t know if I’d ever even see that lunatic again.

Suddenly, the door to my apartment crashed open as a wild-haired man barreled through it, his legs pumping, his threadbare overcoat flapping like a cape behind him. Bonz didn’t even slow down as the killer whirled and raised his gun, but too late, he raised it too late, not even close to fast enough, and Bonz slammed into him, legs churning, never stopping. The gun went off with a
pop
and I was vaguely aware of a chunk of my ceiling falling to the carpet as Bonz’s momentum carried the two of them across the room and into a spine-cracking impact with the far wall. The gun skittered across the floor. After impact, Bonz staggered back a step, looking slightly dazed. The killer, whose face had cracked the plaster, turned slowly, looking hazy himself, then a mask of rage covered his bleeding face. I saw a small, bloody gash in the freakishly large expanse between his eyes.

“Bonzetti,” he snarled. He took half a step forward and Bonz, who seemed to recover faster, did a spin-punch move I think I once saw in a video game. The killer’s head snapped back and turned the crack in the plaster into a volleyball-sized hole. The killer dropped unconscious to the carpet, blood flowing copiously from both nostrils. He was still breathing, but the sound was made ragged as it bubbled up through twin rivers of blood.

Bonz stared down at the killer. He blinked, then blinked again. Then, suddenly, his eyes flew wide and his face filled with a terror I couldn’t have imagined seeing on
any
face, much less one belonging to someone as tough and scary as Bonz. He backed away and tripped over Angel’s body—everyone seemed to be doing that—and landed on his ass. He crab-crawled backward in what looked remarkably like a panic until he hit the sofa on the opposite wall of my living room.

I didn’t know what was more surprising—seeing Bonz burst in and attack the killer, or seeing a hard case like Bonz reduced to the frightened wreck before me—and that was
after
he won the fight.

I heard a door open somewhere, then another. Voices drifted in from down the hall outside my apartment. My neighbors might not have heard the silenced gunshots, but they couldn’t have failed to hear Bonz crash through my door and put the killer’s head through my wall. Any second now faces would peer through the open doorway and see, what? I surveyed the room. Angel was a bloody, one-eyed mess in the middle of the room. A man with a gun lay unconscious and bleeding from a wound between his eyes and a battered nose. A homeless man was curled on the floor at the base of my sofa, hugging his knees and muttering to himself. And then there was me, the only one left standing, with my blood-spattered face, wearing an undershirt with blood on it, blood that had soaked through my tux shirt. I doubted I’d be able to convince anyone that this was a friendly game of charades gone bad.

The option the killer had dangled in front of me, the one in which no one found out about Angel, was gone, thanks to Bonz. I had no idea if I would have taken that option, but Bonz had rendered the issue moot. My choices had dwindled to two, neither very attractive. I could greet my neighbors and, soon after, the police, or I could run like hell and try to figure a way out of this later. With the killer lying there, I just might have a shot at convincing the cops that—

Suddenly, the killer’s eyelids fluttered. He moaned and began to stir. He opened his eyes and rolled onto his side, pausing there, looking like he was gathering his strength to stand. He hadn’t looked up at me yet. He seemed to be out of it still. If he fully came to, there was no way he’d stick around for the cops. And if he was gone, I’d be the only suspect in Angel’s murder—assuming he didn’t kill me on his way out.

As the killer put his hands against the wall and began to push up with his legs, I considered picking up a heavy bookend and knocking the son of a bitch cold, then telling the cops everything. Once again, though, Bonz took
my
matters into
his
hands. As Angel’s murderer groggily pushed his way to his feet, leaning against the wall for support, Bonz stepped in front of me. He shot a quick, fearful glance at the killer, then grabbed me by the arm.

“Move it,” he said.

The scream of distant sirens rose into my consciousness. Somebody finally called the cops, it seemed.

“Hold on,” I said. “Maybe we should wait—”

“Go!”

He spun me around almost effortlessly and shoved me out through my apartment door and into the hallway, where Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson from next door and all five members of the Chen family from down the hall got a terrific look at me covered in blood.

The sirens were getting closer. The neighbors were staring at me, at the blood. Bonz was pushing me from behind.

Things were happening too fast. The killer would snap out of it soon, and I wasn’t keen on seeing that sadistic bastard again.
Shit!
The gun that killed Angel—the one with my fingerprints all over it—was still back there, in the killer’s pocket. Now that things had gone wrong for him he’d probably just drop the gun next to Angel’s body, essentially drawing a big target on my forehead.

The sirens were loud now. The cops were close. Bonz was shoving me through my shocked neighbors, urging me to hurry, whispering threats and encouragement in alternating breaths.

I knew I could no longer stay and wait for the police. I was about to become wanted for murder, with at least seven witnesses who saw me leave my apartment painted with my friend’s blood. The evidence was piled high against me, as the killer pointed out. If I was arrested, not only couldn’t I work toward finding out what happened to my brother, but I wouldn’t be able to figure out a way out of the mess I’d been dumped in.

I jerked my arm away from Bonz and began to run. A moment later he flew past me along the corridor toward the stairs, moving with that surprising, deceptive speed and grace he’d shown me in Chinatown.

“Follow me,” he called over his shoulder.

I wasn’t certain I was doing the right thing, but I followed.

NINETEEN

I never knew I could run that fast. Even in my fancy dress shoes, I thought I could have set some sort of record. Yet I looked down the stairs and there was Bonz half a flight ahead of me and increasing the gap.

“Move your ass, Wiley!” he yelled up to me.

Below me, Bonz crashed through the exit door at the bottom of the stairs. A moment later I followed him. Four flights above me I heard the stair door bang open, then footsteps descending in a hurry. I heard a slight hitch in the steps and thanked God for the killer’s little limp.

We turned a corner, into the small foyer of my building, and Bonz slid to a stop. I slammed into him from behind. He shoved me against the wall of mailboxes and flattened himself beside me. He peered through the glass door, onto the street. Around the corner behind us, the stairway door we’d come through seconds before crashed open.

“Bonz…”

“I know.” He was still watching the street.

“Are we making a stand here? Because he’s got a gun and we don’t. We don’t, do we?”

“No. Now move it.”

He shoved me roughly out through the door and, after I caught my balance, I took off to the left down Brimmer Street.

“My car’s this way!” I said.

Of course, Bonz passed me before we’d gone ten yards. For a guy who had to be pushing fifty, he could really move. He turned left at the first corner, onto Mount Vernon Street, seemingly knowing my car was parked that way.

As we raced toward my Corolla, just half a block away now, my feet were really starting to ache in my leather-soled dress shoes. I was dying to look over my shoulder to see if the killer had seen us turn the corner. I didn’t bother, though. I figured if he had, a bullet would whiz past any second.

As we skidded to a stop at my piece-of-junk Corolla, I panicked, fearing that I’d left the keys in my tuxedo jacket, which was, at the moment, safe from harm up in my apartment. I thrust my hand into my pants pocket and felt the comforting tangle of keys. Bonz pushed past me, opened the driver’s door, and slid behind the wheel.

“Keys!” he barked.

“Hey, my car was locked!” I said.

“Give me the goddamned keys!”

I tossed them to him and hurried around to the passenger side as the engine coughed to life. I tore open the door and hadn’t even slipped all the way in when the car jerked forward. I was lucky not to have been thrown from my seat and deposited on the curb. Bonz had been homeless for how long? Did he even remember how to drive a car?

We’d gone only a few yards when a silhouette stepped around the corner of my street up ahead. Bonz locked the brakes. My Corolla shuddered to a screeching stop and I feared that countless bolts had shaken loose and something vital to the vehicle’s operation or our safety would soon fall off.

Up ahead, Angel’s killer raised his arms straight in front of him. I was pretty sure there was a gun in his hands.

Bonz dropped the car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator. Looking over his shoulder, he made a dozen little corrections as we drove in reverse far too fast for me to feel confident that we wouldn’t plow into something at any moment. I felt a thump as our car clipped something—or maybe a bullet had clipped us.

Miraculously, we reached the cross street behind us and flew around the corner onto Charles Street, still careening backward. Even more miraculously, we didn’t slam into any other car as we did. Bonz hit the brakes again and spun the wheel and horns blared around us and somehow we were going forward again. Apparently Bonz did, in fact, remember how to handle a car.

Not far away I heard sirens scream, then stop. The cops had reached my building.

Bonz made a few quick, random turns. Finally, he relaxed and drove just above the speed limit along Beacon Street.

“No one’s behind us,” he said. “At least not yet.”

I was still catching my breath. I felt the weight of something in my lap and looked down to see the rubber band–secured file containing Jake’s notes. I hadn’t even noticed I’d kept hold of it during the latter part of my encounter with the killer in my apartment, much less when I was running for my life.

I took a deep breath and said, “I don’t think we ever would have outrun that guy if he didn’t have a limp. Well,” I added, “I wouldn’t have, anyway. You might have.”

“He had a limp?”

“Yeah.”

“You give that to him or did he already have it?”

“He already had it.”

“Good,” Bonz said. He seemed mildly amused. He also seemed, well, close to normal. And not just when I took into consideration the circumstances we were in. No, Bonz seemed kind of…sane.

He drove in silence for a while and his face grew dark. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head, but that might have been the grinding of my Corolla’s engine. As Bonz drove, I watched him from the corner of my eye. Now and then he’d blink violently, a facial tic, I think, but he didn’t look like he “changed channels,” like he’d done before. And, thankfully, he didn’t suddenly look surprised to find himself behind the wheel of a car. Instead, he just looked thoughtful.

I did some thinking, too. I thought about how screwed I was. How my life had become a carnival ride, and not the fun kind, but the kind that makes you vomit. I thought about how Bonz had taken away any chance I had of getting out of this without involving the police. Then I shook my head. Actually, Bonz had probably saved my life. And I knew I’d never have taken the killer’s offer to make Angel’s body simply disappear—at least I liked to think I wouldn’t have. No, I knew at some point I’d have to take my chances with the cops. But I had to think of the best way to do that. I had to think of how to stay out of jail, to prove my innocence. I also wanted to think of a way to pin this on that son of a bitch with the hammer and whoever was ultimately behind all this. And, of course, I wanted to find out what happened to Jake, and, if he was truly dead, to come up with a way to make sure someone paid for that. Frankly, I had a
lot
of thinking to do.