“I know you’re a liar.” I looked over my shoulder.
“Liar?” he asked. “What ever do you mean? I’ve been completely forthcoming with you. Took you to dinner, made you my top finance man. Sure, there was the surface deception about what the cargo was in those cars, but failure to disclose and lying are not the same thing.”
“You lied about your name,” I said. “Lied about that to everyone.”
“Julian,” he said, “I must say I’m offended.” His eyes were soft, understanding. “After the relationship we’ve built—the business partnership—for you to come barging in here with some half-baked accusations? And alongside that joker. Green as the day is long, looking to make a splash and get off the desk. I tell you, boredom is a dangerous thing.” He shook his head.
“Half-baked?” I asked, gun still raised. “You’re denying it, then. That your name is Ben Murray.”
“I am.”
I took it in. “Well, once a liar, I guess.” My hands shook slightly. I hoped he couldn’t see it.
“I’ll humor you,” he said. “I have every official government document with my name on it. Driver’s license, birth certificate, social security card. All with the name Vincent Allen Decierdo. The license is in my wallet,”—he nodded his head toward he far side of the desk—“the others are in that cabinet.” He nodded toward a beige filing cabinet to his right.
“And all that can be forged,” I said.
He gave a conciliatory nod. “I’ve been charged with a crime three times—each time exonerated—and the name Vincent Decierdo is on all court documents. Also in the cabinet. I grew up in Christfalls, West Virginia, and was second-team all-state in football. Nose tackle. There are news clippings with my name and pictures that display the surname on the back of my jersey. My mother, Patricia Decierdo, kept them for me.”
I listened.
“I tell you this out of respect for you,” he said. “I’m happy to show you any of these things. I must say, I’m offended, however.”
“Offended?” I said. “You want to talk offended? How about working for a drug lord that lies to you every step of the way?”
“You’re being irrational.”
“How about working for a murderer?”
His face changed. “Who is telling you these things?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” he said. “It matters quite a bit. These are serious accusations, and if you are going to barge into my home and spew them at me, you at least owe me the courtesy of revealing the source.”
I hesitated. “I had some professionals check you out.”
He smirked. “Ah yes. And I suppose these professionals charged you a sizeable fee for their services, yes?”
I said nothing.
“And I suppose,” he continued, “the professionals revealed information that fell mostly in line with whatever suspicions you brought to them?”
I said nothing. I just listened.
“Well?”
“Fuck off,” I said, re-gripping the pistol to compensate for the sweat on my fingers.
“You have anger, Julian. I don’t fault you for it. But I know you’re intelligent. I know you’re smarter than to believe whatever some crackpot investigator decides to feed you. I know you’re smarter than to team up with some rookie cop and launch a cowboy raid based on bad information. You’re breaking all kinds of laws here, Julian. You’ve put yourself in a precarious position.”
I gripped the gun tighter.
“But I can offer you a way out,” he said. “There’s a way out of all of this. To start, I need you to put the gun down.”
“You killed him.”
“Killed who?” he asked, annoyed.
“You know who,” I said, raising my voice. “Damon. You killed Damon, and you tried to kill Suzanne.”
He put on a broad smile. “Hogwash. I won’t stand for it. Damon Peters is in Mesa, Arizona, relocated due to necessity after I used considerable political capital to free him from an unfortunate situation that you created with your foolishness.” The smile was gone. “If it weren’t for me, he’d be doing twenty-five in the max wing of Florence right now in Colorado Springs. You know what kind of inmates run at Florence? Damon wouldn’t live to see the sentence through.”
The gun was getting heavy. Raphino hadn’t returned, which gave me reason to worry. I checked over my shoulder again.
As I listened to Vince, I wanted to believe him. I was still confident in the findings we’d brought, and the reason we were in his house; I was still confident in the mission. But he had an answer for everything. And his answers were preferable to the information I’d brought in. His answers were neat and tidy; he was who he said he was, he had the documents to prove it, we’d been fooled by a greedy investigator, Damon was alive and well in sunny Arizona, this was all a big mistake, but there was a way out. True or not, the world in which these answers resided was preferable to the world in which he was a murderous villain named Benjamin Murray. I wanted Damon alive. I wanted to leave this room without anyone getting hurt, without guns firing. I wanted Raphino to return safely, and us to quietly leave. That was what I wanted. I had never been one for confrontation.
I remembered Suzanne, her pale skin and blue chattering lips. I remembered her story. It complicated things.
“Put the gun down,” he said.
“Where’s Adeline?”
“She told me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
It hit me like an arrow in the chest. “Told you what?”
He shrugged. “Everything. Or most of it, anyway. I can’t say it surprises me, the first part. She’s never been especially chaste. And it doesn’t anger me, either. I knew who she was.”
I swallowed. “I assumed she’d be here.”
“But you know better than to trust assumptions at this point, I hope.”
“Where is she, right now?”
“If I tell you, will you put the gun down?”
“No.”
“I want you to think right now, Julian. I want you to think hard, because what happens next will go a long way into shaping your future. Who can help you more? Who can help you more in these mountains, in this town? Is it him? Or is it me?”
I blinked.
“Who can help you more?” he asked. “Is it a rookie cop who works the desk? Ostracized by his peers because he lacks the basic skills to do the job? How much do you even know about him?”
I forced my dry throat to swallow.
“I’m a good man,” he said. “You know that, Julian. I know you do. I provide jobs, accommodations, and housing for dozens of people in these mountains. I make their lives whole. I created a community, where we’re safe from the pains and demands of the modern world. Look at the good I’ve done.” He motioned around the room, referencing everything in his empire. “And they say I’m a criminal? For what? For distributing a substance that people willingly pay for and choose to take?”
I could no longer swallow
“You have a decision to make,” he continued. “Put the gun down and let me help you. You know I can. You do. I can eliminate felony charges. I can make people disappear. I can do whatever the bloody hell I want in these mountains. I can make this all go away if you just put the gun down.”
I stared at him. He stared back. His fingers might have moved. I re-gripped the pistol. I longed for that office in that high rise. I longed for the city, the congestion, and the smells. I wanted to be back there, with my wife and my job and control. I wanted my unfulfilling, soul-sucking, terrible life back. I was safe there. The safety, at that very moment, outweighed everything else I had come to loathe. The safety was all that mattered.
“Put the gun down.”
The silence of the room hummed in my ears. It hummed for a good while.
I heard Raphino’s footsteps before I saw him. They came quickly down the hallway—he was no longer tiptoeing. Both Vince and I turned our attention to the doorway, where he appeared, out of breath.