The Myron Bolitar Series 7-Book Bundle (81 page)

“I want to know how Liz died,” he said softly.

“She was bludgeoned with a baseball bat,” Myron said.

Cole’s eyes closed. “Who did it?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Right now, Greg Downing is the main suspect.”

Cole Whiteman shook his head. “He wasn’t there long enough.”

Myron felt a knot in his stomach. He tried to lick his lips but his mouth was too dry. “You were there?”

“Across the street behind a garbage can. Like Oscar the fucking Grouch.” His lips smiled, but there was nothing behind it. “You want no one to notice you? Pretend you’re homeless.” He stood up in one fluid motion, like some kind of yoga master. “A baseball bat,” he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose, turned away, and lowered his chin to his chest. Myron could hear small sobs.

“Help me find her killer, Cole.”

“Why the fuck should I trust you?”

“Me or the police,” Myron said. “It’s up to you.”

That slowed him. “The cops won’t do shit. They think she’s a murderer.”

“Then help me,” Myron said.

He sat back down on the floor and inched a bit closer to Myron. “We’re not murderers, you know. The government labeled us that and now everyone believes it. But it’s not true. You understand?”

Myron nodded. “I understand.”

Cole gave him a hard look. “You patronizing me?”

“No.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Cole said. “You want me to stay and talk, don’t you dare patronize me. You stay honest—I’ll stay honest.”

“Fine,” Myron said. “But then don’t hand me the ‘we’re not killers, we’re freedom fighters’ line. I’m not in the mood for a verse of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ ”

“You think that’s what I’m talking about?”

“You’re not being prosecuted by a corrupt government,” Myron said. “You kidnapped and killed a man, Cole. You can dress it up in all the fancy language you want, but that’s what you did.”

Cole almost smiled. “You really believe that.”

“Wait, don’t tell me; let me guess,” Myron said. He feigned looking up in thought. “The government brainwashed me, right? This whole thing has been a CIA plot to crush a dozen college students who threatened to undermine our government.”

“No,” he said. “But we didn’t kill Hunt.”

“Who did?”

Cole hesitated. He looked up and blinked back what looked like tears. “Hunt shot himself.”

His reddening eyes looked to Myron for a reaction. Myron remained still.

“The kidnapping was a hoax,” Cole went on. “The whole thing was Hunt’s idea. He wanted to hurt his old man so he figured what better way than to take his money and then embarrass the shit out of him? But then those assholes surprised us and Hunt chose another revenge.” Cole’s breathing grew deep and erratic. “He ran outside with the gun. He screamed, ‘Fuck you, Dad.’ Then he blew his own head off.”

Myron said nothing.

“Look at our history,” Cole Whiteman said, his voice a semi-plea. “We were a harmless group of stragglers. We protested at antiwar rallies. We got stoned a lot. We never committed one act of violence. None of us even had a gun, except for Hunt. He was my roommate and best friend. I could never hurt him.”

Myron didn’t know what to believe; more to the point, he didn’t have time now to worry about a twenty-year-old homicide. He waited for Cole to continue, to let him talk out the past, but Cole remained still. Finally, Myron tried to update the subject. “You saw Greg Downing go into Liz Gorman’s building?”

Cole nodded slowly.

“She was blackmailing him?”

“Not just her,” he corrected. “It was my idea.”

“What did you have on Greg?”

Cole shook his head. “Not important.”

“She was probably killed over it.”

“Probably,” Cole agreed. “But you don’t need to know the specifics. Trust me.”

Myron was in no position to push it. “Tell me about the night of the murder.”

Cole scratched at his stubble hard, like a cat on a post. “Like I said,” he began, “I was across the street. When you live underground, you have certain rules you live by—rules that have kept us alive and free for the last twenty years. One of them is that after we commit a crime, we never stay together. The feds look for us in groups, not individuals. Since we’ve been in the city, Liz and I have made sure we were never together. We only communicated by pay phone.”

“What about Gloria Katz and Susan Milano?” Myron asked. “Where are they?”

Cole smiled without mirth or humor. Myron saw the missing teeth and wondered if they were part of the disguise or something more sinister. “I’ll tell you about them another time,” he said.

Myron nodded. “Go on,” he said.

The lines in Cole’s face seemed to deepen and darken in the bare light. He took his time before continuing. “Liz was all packed and ready to go,” he said finally. “We were going to score the cash and get out of the city, just like I planned. I was just waiting across the street for her signal.”

“What signal?”

“After all the money was collected, she’d flicker the lights three times. That meant she’d be down in ten minutes. We were going to meet at One Hundred Sixteenth Street and take the One train out of here. But the signal never came. In fact, her light never went off at all. I was afraid to go check on her for obvious reasons. We got rules about that too.”

“Who was Liz supposed to collect from that night?”

“Three people,” Cole said, holding up the pointer, middle man, and ring man. “Greg Downing”—he dropped ring man—“his wife what’s-her-name—”

“Emily.”

“Right, Emily.” The middle finger went down. “And the old guy who owns the Dragons.” His hand made a fist now.

Myron’s heart contracted. “Wait a second,” he said. “Clip Arnstein was supposed to show up?”

“Not supposed to,” Cole corrected. “He did.”

A black coldness seeped into Myron’s bones. “Clip was there?”

“Yes.”

“And the other two?”

“All three showed up. But that wasn’t the plan. Liz was supposed to meet Downing at a bar downtown. They were going to make the transaction there.”

“A place called the Swiss Chalet?”

“Right.”

“But Greg showed up at the apartment too?”

“Later on, yeah. But Clip Arnstein arrived first.”

Win’s warning about Clip came back to him. You like him too much. You’re not being objective. “How much was Clip supposed to pay?”

“Thirty thousand dollars.”

“The police only found ten thousand in her apartment,” Myron said. “And those bills were from the bank robbery.”

Cole shrugged. “Either the old man didn’t pay her or else the killer took the money.” Then, thinking it through a little more he added, “Or maybe Clip Arnstein killed her. But he seems kind of old, don’t you think?”

Myron didn’t answer. “How long was he inside?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes.”

“Who came by next?”

“Greg Downing. I remember he had a satchel. I figured it had the money in it. He was in and out fast—couldn’t have been more than a minute. And he still had the satchel on him when he came out. That’s when I started to worry.”

“Greg could have killed her,” Myron said. “It doesn’t take long to hit someone with a baseball bat.”

“But he wasn’t carrying a bat,” Cole said. “The satchel wasn’t big enough for one. And Liz had a bat in her apartment. She hated guns, so she kept it for protection.”

Myron knew that no bat had been found at Gorman’s apartment. That meant the killer must have used Liz’s. Could Greg have gone upstairs, entered her apartment, found the bat, killed her with it, ran out—all in such a short time?

It seemed doubtful.

“What about Emily?” Myron asked.

“She came in last,” Cole said.

“How long was she there?”

“Five minutes. Something like that.”

Time enough to gather the evidence to plant. “Did you see anybody else go in and out of the building?”

“Sure,” Cole said. “Lot of students live there.”

“But we can assume that Liz was already dead by the time Greg Downing arrived, right?”

“Right.”

“So the question is, who do you remember going in between the time she got back from the Swiss Chalet and the time Greg arrived? Besides Clip Arnstein.”

Cole thought about it and shrugged. “Mostly students, I guess. There was a real tall guy—”

“How tall?”

“I don’t know. Very.”

“I’m six-four. Taller than me?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Was he black?”

“I don’t know. I was across the street and the light wasn’t too good. I wasn’t watching that closely. He might have been black. But I don’t think he’s our man.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I watched the building until the next morning. He never came back out. He must have lived there or at least stayed with someone overnight. I doubt the killer would’ve hung around like that.”

Tough to argue, Myron thought. He tried to process what he was hearing in a cold, computerlike way, but the circuits were starting to overload. “Who else did you remember seeing? Anybody stand out?”

Cole thought again, his eyes wandering aimlessly. “There was one woman who went in not long before Greg got there. Now that I think of it, she left before he got there too.”

“What did she look like?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Blond, brunette?”

Cole shook his head. “I only remember her because she wore a long coat. The students all wear windbreakers or sweatshirts or something like that. I remember thinking she looked like an adult.”

“Was she carrying anything? Did she—”

“Look, Myron, I’m sorry. I gotta get moving.” He stood and looked down at Myron with a hollow, lost expression. “Good luck finding the son of a bitch,” he said. “Liz was a good person. She never hurt anyone. None of us did.”

Before he could turn away, Myron asked, “Why did you call me last night? What were you going to sell me?”

Cole smiled sadly and began to walk away. He stopped before he reached the door and turned back around. “I’m alone now,” he said. “Gloria Katz was shot in the initial attack. She died three months later. Susan Milano died in a car crash in 1982. Liz and I kept their deaths a secret. We wanted the feds searching for four of us, not two. We thought it would help us stay hidden. So you see, there is only one of us left now.”

He had the bone-weary look of a survivor who wasn’t so sure the dead weren’t the lucky ones. He rambled back over toward Myron and unlocked the handcuffs. “Go,” he said.

Myron rose, rubbing his wrists. “Thank you,” he said.

Cole merely nodded.

“I won’t tell anyone where you are.”

“Yeah,” Cole said. “I know.”

Chapter 35

Myron sprinted to his car and dialed Clip’s number. Clip’s secretary answered and told him that Mr. Arnstein was not in at the moment. He asked her to transfer the call to Calvin Johnson. She put him on hold. Ten seconds later, the call was put through.

“Hey, Myron,” Calvin said, “what’s up?”

“Where’s Clip?”

“He should be here in a couple of hours. By game time anyway.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find him,” Myron said. “When you do, call me back.”

“What’s going on?” Calvin asked.

“Just find him.”

Myron disconnected the call. He opened the car window and took deep breaths. It was a few minutes after six. Most of the guys would already be at the arena warming up. He headed up Riverside Drive and crossed the George Washington Bridge. He dialed Leon White’s number. A woman answered.

“Hello?”

Myron disguised his voice. “Is this Mrs. Fiona White?” he asked.

“Yes, it is.”

“Would you like to subscribe to
Popular Mechanics
? We have a special going on for a limited time.”

“No, thank you.” She hung up.

Conclusion: Fiona White, the Sepbabe and promisor of night ecstasy, was home. Time to pay her a little visit.

He took Route 4 and got off at Kindermack Road. Five minutes later, he was there. The house was a semi-nouveau ranch with orange-tinged brick and diamond-shaped windows. This particular architectural look was all the rage for maybe a two-month span in 1977, and it had aged about as well as the leisure suit. Myron parked in the driveway. On either side of the cement walkway were low-rise iron fences with plastic ivy snaked through them. Classy.

He rang the bell. Fiona White opened the door. Her green, flower-print blouse hung open over a white leotard. Her bleached-blonde hair was tied in a bun that was falling apart, spare strands dangling down over her eyes and ears. She looked at Myron and frowned. “Yes?”

“Hi, Fiona. I’m Myron Bolitar. We met the other night at TC’s house.”

The frown was still there. “Leon isn’t here.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Fiona sighed and crossed her arms under the ample bosom. “What about?”

“Can I come inside?”

“No. I’m busy right now.”

“I think it would be better in private.”

“This is private,” she said, her face unyielding. “What do you want?”

Myron shrugged, conjured up his most charming smile, saw it would take him nowhere. “I want to know about you and Greg Downing.”

Fiona White’s arms dropped to her sides. She suddenly looked horror-stricken. “What?”

“I know about your e-mail to him. Sepbabe. You were supposed to meet last Saturday for the”—Myron made quote marks with his fingers—“ ‘greatest night of ecstasy imaginable.’ Do you recall that?”

Fiona White went to close the door. Myron stuck his foot in the way.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” she said.

“I’m not trying to expose you.”

She pushed the door against his foot. “Get out.”

“I’m just trying to find Greg Downing.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“Were you having an affair with him?”

“No. Now leave.”

“I saw the e-mail, Fiona.”

“Think what you want. I’m not talking to you.”

“Fine,” Myron said, moving back and throwing up his hands. “I’ll talk to Leon instead.”

Her cheeks flushed. “Do whatever you want,” she said. “I did not have an affair with him. I did not see him last Saturday night. I don’t know where he is.”

She slammed the door.

Gee, that went well.

Myron headed back to his car. As he reached the door, a black BMW with tinted windows rocketed up the street and screeched to a halt in the driveway. The driver’s door opened and Leon flew out like an escaped bird.

“What the fuck you doing here?” he snapped.

“Take it easy, Leon.”

“Fuck take it easy,” he shouted. Leon ran up and stuck his face within an inch of Myron’s. “What the fuck you doing around here, huh?”

“I came by to see you.”

“Bullshit.” The spittle hit Myron’s cheeks. “We’re supposed to be at the arena in twenty minutes.” He pushed Myron in the chest. Myron stumbled back. “Why you here, huh?” Leon pushed again. “What are you sniffing after?”

“Nothing.”

“You think you’d find my wife alone?”

“It’s nothing like that.”

Leon lined himself up for another push. Myron was ready. When Leon’s hand reached him, Myron’s right forearm shot across his body, pinning Leon’s hands helplessly against Myron’s chest. Myron bent at the waist, bending Leon’s wrists back the wrong way. The pressure forced Leon to drop to one knee. Myron’s right hand slid until it met Leon’s left. He grabbed it and quickly executed an elbow lock. Leon winced.

“You calm?” Myron asked.

“Motherfucker.”

“That doesn’t sound like calm, Leon.” Myron applied a little pressure to the elbow. Joint locks were about controlled pain. They worked by bending joints in ways they were never intended to bend. The more the bend, the more the pain. But go too far and the joint dislocated or a bone broke. Myron was careful.

“Greg is missing again,” Myron said. “That’s why I’m on the team. I’m supposed to find him.”

Leon was still on his knees, his arm locked and upright. “So what does that have to do with me?”

“You two have had a falling out,” Myron said. “I want to know why.”

Leon looked up at him. “Let go of me, Myron.”

“If you attack me again—”

“I won’t. Just let go already.”

Myron waited another second or two, then did as Leon asked. Leon rubbed his arm and stood. Myron eyed him.

Leon said, “You’re here because you think Greg and Fiona were getting it on.”

“Were they?”

He shook his head. “Not from a lack of trying though.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s supposed to be my best friend. But he’s not. He’s just another fucking superstar who takes what he wants.”

“Including Fiona.”

“He tried. Tried like hell. But she’s not like that.”

Myron said nothing. Not his place.

“Guys are always hitting on Fiona,” he went on. “Because of the way she looks. And the whole racial thing. So when I saw you here when you figured I wouldn’t be around …” He shrugged into silence.

“Did you ever confront Greg?” Myron asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “A couple of weeks ago.”

“What did you say to him?”

Leon’s eyes narrowed, suddenly wary. “What does this have to do with finding him?” he asked, suspicious now. “You trying to pin this on me?”

“Pin what on you?”

“You said he’s disappeared. You trying to pin that on me?”

“I’m just trying to find out where he is.”

“I got nothing to do with it.”

“I didn’t say you did. I just want to know what happened when you confronted him.”

“What do you think happened?” Leon countered. “The motherfucker denied it. He made this big point of swearing he’d never sleep with any married woman—especially his best friend’s wife.”

Myron sort of gulped at that one. “But you didn’t believe him.”

“He’s a superstar, Myron.”

“That doesn’t make him a liar.”

“No, but it makes him something different. Guys like Greg and Michael Jordan and Shaq and TC … they ain’t like the rest of us. They got their own thing going. Everyone else is a fucking underling to them. The whole planet is set up to cater to their whims, you know what I’m saying?”

Myron nodded. In college he had been one of those who got to breathe the rarefied air of superstardom. He thought again about the bonds superstars shared. He and Greg had not exchanged more than five words before Greg visited him in the hospital, but there had been a bond. They both knew. Superstars share that rarefied air with very few. As TC had told him, it does indeed isolate in a very bizarre, often unhealthy way.

And with that thought came something of a revelation. Myron took a step back.

He’d always thought that if Greg was in trouble, he’d go to his closest friend for help. But that wasn’t the case. If Greg had indeed stumbled across the dead body and panicked, if he had seen all his problems—the gambling debts, the threat of exposure, the divorce, the child custody case, the blackmail, the probability of being a suspect in a murder—closing in on him, who would he go to for help?

He’d go to the guy who understood him best.

He’d go to the guy who could best relate to the unique troubles of superstardom.

He’d go to the guy who shared that rarefied air with him.