“I gave you Esposito because I thought it would help! And why … okay. If any of this is true, and it sure as hell isn’t—but if any of it’s true, why would I call you when I got robbed? Why would I ask you, personally—the man who’s on the trail of the Rathole murderer—to go and find my masks? Why would I alert you that way, huh?”
“Good point. But by all reports the shooter was wearing a hawk mask—and you knew good and well that you didn’t have any hawk masks. Come to think of it, for all your fucking epic mask collection, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hawk.”
“That’s meaningless.”
“A meaningless omission? I guess it could be, but I don’t think so. It was one more way you could kick sand over your tracks. Writing that book didn’t do it, obviously. Hell, it put you in the scene at the time of the killings, even though you were real careful to leave out any mention of the Rathole—and you told me it’d all gone down after you’d left cover. But that wasn’t true. A glance at a calendar told me that much.”
“I might’ve made a mistake. It was a long time ago.”
“Yeah, it was.” Finally now, he set the mask aside and reached for the book that had shared the bench with him all this time. It was Lucas Tate’s book, Paper Demon—the copy Tate had left for the detective downstairs, on a day months ago when he’d been too busy for lunch.
One page was dog-eared. Leo thumbed his way to it.
He read aloud, “For ‘R’… ‘I talk with the moon, said the owl, and the night belongs to me.’” He closed the book and set it on his lap. “Let me ask you something, Tate. Ramona, if she were still alive … is this what she’d want?”
Tate’s shadowed face was dark within the mask, and his eyes were unreadable. But he whispered, “You didn’t know her.”
“No, I didn’t. But you did.”
In a hushed, almost little-boy voice, he broke down. His eyes were wet, and he clutched at his chest like he was trying to keep something in, and failing. He said, “She rolled around in a red wagon; she couldn’t walk very well. I pulled her around the city. She was on the sidewalk.”
“Then what, Tate?”
“You know they called me ‘Nimrod,’ don’t you? It was because I never paid enough attention. She … she got away from me. I let go of the handle, and she rolled. Right into the street. And I didn’t see it, not before this … this black car comes tearing around the corner.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Leo assured him. “Not that part.”
“He hit her. And for a second, he slowed down. And then he just kept driving. The whole thing happened in less than five seconds. I didn’t have time to leave the sidewalk, and it was over. Goddamn.” He put his hands up to his face, trying to rub at his eyes and finding himself blocked by the mask. “Goddamn, it’s been … goddamn.”
“Stop saying that. We’re in a fucking church.”
“Leo, you have to … goddamn. You have to believe me. I don’t … I don’t even remember, hardly, what happened that night. You were right, what you said earlier,” he said, talking faster with every phrase. Catching up to his own story, and seeing where he was caught. “The drugs. I took so many drugs.”
The detective was still seated with the book lying across his knees. He said, “You saw the car and you went inside, asking who it belonged to. You didn’t know it was Contarini’s car. You didn’t know he’d ditched it a week or two before, and then flown back to Rome. You were wearing this mask. You had a gun.”
“I forgot I even had a gun.”
“You had a gun, and you waved it around. And Hash saw you. He thought you were there about the drugs, or to rob them. So he came out with the sawed-off, we know that much.”
Lucas Tate nodded, slower then faster. His mask slid on his face. He pushed it back up with an absent shove of his finger. “It was self-defense. He shot first. He opened fire, and he winged somebody—one of the customers. I panicked.”
“Anybody would have.”
“I panicked!” He said it louder this time, and he came up closer so he was very near, in front of Leo. “Someone was shooting at me, so I started shooting! And people were … they were falling, and screaming. I heard somebody scream.”
“You killed them.”
“No. I didn’t. I wouldn’t have.”
“Lucas, you did. You killed them all, and now”—he sighed, and reached behind his back for a pair of handcuffs—“it’s time you answered for it.”
“No.”
“I don’t want to bring you in. Believe that much for me, will you?” Leo stood and flexed the cuffs. They clicked in his hand, and shimmered in the dull yellow light.
“No,” Tate said. And this time it wasn’t soft or penitent. It wasn’t even defiant. It was a word that had come to a decision. “Please, Leo, Ramsey, man—things are different now, can’t you see? I’ve turned it around—I’m not that miserable shit anymore, I’m a productive member of society, I … I help people! Christ, it was thirty years ago, and putting me away isn’t going to bring them back!”
“Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”
“I’ve done good work! I’ve been a voice for the whole joker community—for you, Leo, and for everybody we know, everybody out there who’s messed up just like us. I’ve fought, and lobbied, and—”
“Stop it.”
“Leo, I’m not doing this.”
“Turn around.”
“No.”
Leo knew what the decision was. He hadn’t counted on it, but he’d prepared for it. “You gonna fight me? Is that how this is going to go?”
Lucas Tate swung his head back and forth, seeking a weapon—and that’s when Leo knew he didn’t have one.
There’d been no guarantee he’d come unarmed, but the detective knew there were two kinds of men, and that’s pretty much alclass="underline" the kind who do their own dirty work, and the kind who avoid it at all costs. Tate was the latter. Upon a split second of reflection, Leo wondered if Tate’s hands-off attitude wasn’t a direct result of the Rathole; just one time he took matters into his own hands … and look how that turned out.
Tate spied, seized, and brandished one of the painted wood poles that had previously held aloft the birthplace of Christ. The stable’s support was rounded and heavy, about half the size and weight of a railroad tie. Tate struggled with it, holding it between himself and the detective—who was listening hard for something outside.
It’d been there, a moment before: a car, drawing slowly into the parking lot outside. Probably pulling into a spot right next to Tate’s vehicle. Leo didn’t hear it now, but he hadn’t heard the door open or any footsteps. He snaked his hand into his jacket, feeling for his gun.
“Don’t!” Tate warned, taking a short swing with the pole.
“Or what?” Leo asked. “You’ll kill me?” His elbow bent with a snap, and the gun was in his hand at exactly the moment Tate’s weapon came whipping up from the right. The detective ducked and the pole clipped his left horn—taking his hat and smacking it against the basement window behind him. But his head and his horns had taken worse before.
Tate swung again, swiping the big piece of wood right to left—struggling to hold it up and aloft.
Leo’s gun hand came up and lost to a lucky blow; Tate knocked it hard enough to strip the knuckles in an instant, and the detective felt warm blood and numbness. It was another full second or two before he realized over the stinging pain that he wasn’t holding the gun. He’d lost it and it’d slid on the floor. Within reach, if he could get down on the ground.
But Tate brought the pole around again and it went wild; his arms were tired from lifting the thing, or maybe it was heavier than it looked. Leo planted his feet back and lowered his head, locking his shoulders and lunging in the old head-butting fashion that’d never failed him yet.