“No. Thanks. And I better not tell you, either.”
She followed me as I made for the door. “Joe, wait. If you’re doing something connected to the case against you, you better think twice. Or at least fly it by Richard.”
I waved my hand casually at her, crossing the driveway toward the garage. “Not to worry.”
“Joe,” she called out louder, an edge to her voice, “don’t think you’re a cop anymore. Coffin’s just waiting for you to hand him something.”
I faced her from the garage door. “I’m just going to clear something up. No big deal.”
I got into the car and backed it into the open.
She walked up to my window, her face now tight with anger. “This is stupid and you know it. You’re not in a position to clear anything up. That’s not how it works. Let other people do their jobs, Joe. Don’t mess it all up.”
A sudden flash of rage ran through me. “How the hell can I make anything worse? I sit around on my ass, I’ll not only get fired, I’ll probably end up in jail. This whole goddamn thing’s a frame, and it’ll work because the system’s making it work.”
She slapped the side of the car door with her hand. “Yours isn’t the only life on the line, you know,” she shouted. “And you’re not the only one feeling pushed around. You can’t just disappear and play cop because you’re pissed off.”
I put the car into gear, feeling like I was about to explode. “We’ll talk later. I gotta go.”
We were both right, of course, which made matters worse, since for either one of us to back down, more than pride would be sacrificed. But in my self-righteous anger, I only saw that while we were both being victimized, I was the one with the most to lose, and the one best placed to do something about it-a male warrior instinct that belittled Gail’s claim, made me feel subconsciously guilty and, predictably, twice as furious with Henri Alonzo.
The closer I got to Springfield, Vermont, where he lived, the more I resented his reckless intervention. An arrogant twerp at the best of times, he’d either gratuitously taken a poke at me when I was down and out, or he was up to something more sinister. Given the scope of everything that was swirling around me-a dead Russian, the CIA, an attempt on my life, and a steel-tight frame-it wasn’t such a stretch to imagine Henri Alonzo as a willing pawn in somebody else’s scheme.
My growing paranoia had become seductively rational, overriding all the warning signals that normally would have cleared my head. Gail might’ve been wrong about putting my trust in the system she’d so recently embraced. But I was dead wrong in taking my present impulsive course.
I’d totally overlooked the sequence of events that had stimulated me to make this drive-and the unseen hand that had carefully stacked them in place.
While Springfield has as distinct an identity as any other Vermont town, Alonzo’s street seemed totally interchangeable with a dozen others I knew. Comfortably outfitted with trees, lawns, and sidewalks, the neighborhood was one of those post-World War Two enclaves, fated to travel the decades with no truly definable identity. Neither classic nor modern, bearing no particularly regional aspect, they all resemble the generic movie sets so common to films of the 1950s.
I parked opposite his house, the address of which I remembered from the night of the burglary, and crossed the fresh-cut grass to the front door.
He opened up as soon as my thumb left the doorbell.
“What do you want?” I couldn’t decide if his tone echoed anger or fear.
I struggled in vain to stay neutral. “An explanation wouldn’t hurt. Why did you come up with this cock-and-bull story about Mickey Mitchell? We both know it’s total bullshit.”
More slightly built than I, he almost cowered in the doorway. “I told them the truth.”
“What truth? Mitchell was no snitch of mine. He was just a kid. We caught him red-handed, he swore on a stack of Bibles he wouldn’t do it again, and you let him off the hook.”
“I was pressured into that.”
I felt like pinching his face in my hand, and totally lost control of my voice. “Pressured? You fucking little weasel. You told me you didn’t want the publicity.”
He stepped back nervously, and I thought for a moment he might slam the door. “I told you what you wanted to hear.”
I paused, breathing deeply, feeling out of touch with my brain. “Henri,” I tried again more calmly, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Did somebody pay you? Are you in a jam we could help you with?”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What?”
My blood rose once more. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you can’t help what you’re doing. Does somebody have something on you?”
He straightened as if stung. “I’m a respectable man. I have nothing to hide. I have always followed the rules. You’re a crook and now you’ve been caught. That’s not my problem. Please get off my property.”
I sized him up for a moment, considering that since I obviously had nothing left to lose, I might just pop him one for fun. But the adrenaline that had propelled me up here suddenly drained away, and I barely felt able to walk back to the car.
“I guess I had it wrong, then. You’re just a nasty little bastard after all.”
He didn’t answer, choosing to look indignant instead.
I left him and drove back to Brattleboro on autopilot, my mind numb. At home I found a note from Gail, telling me she’d gone to spend the night with her friend Susan, that a little breathing room might do us both some good. She ended with “I love you,” which I knew was supposed to be significant, but by then such sentiment had scant meaning for me. I was feeling as I had a lifetime ago-a teenage warrior in full retreat-empty, alone, beaten, and like the most disposable man on someone else’s game board.
Chapter 12
Richard Levay looked at me curiously, as if I were located at the business end of a microscope. “You realize what a jackass you’ve been?”
I chewed my éclair in silence. We were hunched across from one another in a window booth at the most fashionable coffee shop in town, a couple of blocks south of the courthouse where I was to be arraigned in half an hour. It was down the street from Dunkin’ Donuts, whose more gluey concoctions I much preferred, but Richard had arranged the meeting and was far more discriminating than I. Also, I wasn’t in the mood to argue about pastries.
“If arraignments didn’t just happen to fall on Mondays in this county,” he continued, “you would be cooling your heels in Woodstock right now. Coffin filed an obstruction of justice charge against you two seconds after he hung up on Henri Alonzo, and I seriously doubt the judge would’ve cut you slack twice in two days, not for something like that. In fact, I think the only reason Coffin didn’t nail you just for publicity’s sake, arraignment or no arraignment, is that he set the whole thing up from the start.”
I gave him a blank look, realization only slowly dawning.
Richard shook his head. “You thought he was so full of himself he didn’t know Harrowsmith wouldn’t lock you up. He played you like a fiddle, Joe-got you to lower your guard, convincing you he was a jerk, and then he leaked that crap about Alonzo to Sammie so she could feed it to you and get you all fired up. Didn’t you think it was a little weird the press was at your house when they busted you, but not at the jail or back home afterward? That’s because he used them to turn your crank. He didn’t tell them what jail you were headed to because he knew you’d be kicked loose. He was willing to look bad in the short run, but even his ego has its soft spots-he was only going to give them one photo-op.”
He sat back in his chair. “You seen this morning’s paper?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s a gift-wrapped present from you to Coffin-Katz’s editorial is a sanctimonious warning to all us poor innocents to be wary of tin gods, meaning you and every other cop that’s been held up for public admiration. If it ever comes time for Coffin to wax eloquent in front of a jury, he’ll have more ammunition than he needs. If the public had any doubts about your guilt before, they’re pretty much history by now.”