“Too bad you figured that out so late in the game, Prager.”
It was no good. The source of his voice was impossible to locate. But as long as the place stayed dark, I would keep breathing. I pulled the.25 out of my pocket and undid the safety.
If I could buy a little more time to calm myself down, I might have one chance.
“So I was wrong about Spivack,” I called out, pressing my belly to the ground next to Morenos’s body.
“Not completely,” Barto answered in a lower voice that didn’t bounce around the room quite as much. “Using a guy like Alfonseca to take the fall was Joe’s idea, only he wouldn’t go through with it all the way. It was such a good idea, too good to let go to waste.”
“You had no such qualms. Two ex-wives to take care of, right?”
“No problems at all,” he answered. “The bitch was already dead.”
Good. If my guess was right, Morenos’s body was between me and Barto. My showing up early had prevented Barto from getting the body out of the way and lining up a clear shot.
“So you went through with it without Spivack. He didn’t know about it until it was too late. And by then, he had to play along or risk being exposed himself.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“If you kill me,” I shouted, “they’ll tie you to me through the checks I paid you with.”
“What checks? I got rid of those ten minutes after you gave ‘em to me. Anyway, why don’t you let me worry about that. Your troubles are all over.”
A blinding light flashed, there was a loud crack, and Morenos’s lifeless body jumped. It jumped again, again. I couldn’t afford to hesitate. I aimed the little.25 into the beam of light and emptied the clip, each shot aimed slightly higher or lower, further left or right than the last. Something clanged against the tile floor. Glass broke. The room went dark again. Barto moaned, but I didn’t hear him fall. I didn’t wait around to see how badly he was hurt. I picked up my flashlight and ran, banging through the kitchen doors, into the sharp corners of the kitchen fixtures and out into the night.
I scrambled to my rented car, fumbling for my keys as I went. I forced my hand to steady and turned the ignition. It caught immediately and I was off. It was all I could do not to floor the gas pedal, but I couldn’t risk getting pulled over, not with Irving Roth’s empty pistol in my lap. I could also feel blood begin seeping out of the cuts the kitchen fixtures had gifted me with as I ran for my life. When I was several blocks away and sure I heard no sirens, I pulled to the curb and disassembled the.25. I wiped the individual pieces clean with the sleeve of my jacket. I threw part of the automatic off a bridge as I crossed. I tossed another piece down a storm drain. I dumped the empty clip in a garbage can near the motel.
If Barto was in any kind of traveling shape at all, I didn’t figure to have much time before he showed up at my motel. But I had something to do even before I cleaned up and got out. I put in a call to Israel Roth.
“Mr. Moe”-his voice was happy and a little boozy-“it was a joy to see you today.”
“You too, Izzy. I hear in your voice that you’re still enjoying the vodka.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Listen, Mr. Roth, I need you to do something for me and I need you to not question me about it.”
“What’s wrong? Are you all right?” The airiness went right out of his voice. “Where are you?”
“I’m okay. I’m okay, but I need you to do this for me.”
“What?”
“Go to the local police station and report your gun missing. Don’t overdo it. Be apologetic. You’re an old man, they won’t be too rough on you. Tell them you had it with you this afternoon when you went to the store and when you checked for it, it was gone. Tell them something like that. Will you do that for me?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Izzy, please. I’m fine. Just do it. Do it now!”
“I’m doing it. I’m doing it.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll talk about it then. Just to let you know, you saved my life today. Thanks. Bye, Mr. Roth.”
I hung up. I knew it would be better for me to check out immediately and get out of town, or to another motel at least. But I couldn’t risk the desk clerk at this motel or the next seeing me in the disheveled state I was in. I tore off my clothes and took a fast shower, scrubbing my hands almost raw. Luckily, none of the cuts I’d accrued were either deep or on my face. None were readily visible. I packed in a hurry, careful to keep the clothes I had just removed in a separate pillowcase.
The desk clerk was too busy with hourly customers to pay me much mind. I paid my bill in cash and asked for directions to Cocoa Beach. I had no intentions of going there, I just remembered the name from I Dream of Jeannie. It’s weird what you think about. It was an obvious ploy, but anything I could do to put some space between Barto and me was worth a try. In any case, the desk clerk didn’t have a clue how to get to Cocoa Beach. He had just moved to Florida from Madras.
I drove all night, fueled by a sick kind of elation. I was alive. A man had actually tried to murder me and I was still alive. But was he? I’d done it, finally. I’d shot a man. Or had I? I guess I’d find out one way or another. I’d never bought into that crap about violence begetting violence. I believed it now. There was a direct line from Carl Stipe’s murder to Moira’s to Spivack’s suicide to what I’d done tonight. What I failed to recognize was that a chain of violence, unlike basketball, did not come with a twenty-four-second clock. It didn’t matter that Carl Stipe had died almost thirty years ago. Once he was killed, more violence was inevitable.
I dumped the pillowcase containing the clothes I’d worn during the exchange of gunfire in the rear end of a garbage truck parked at a rest stop outside Tampa. A little farther north, I turned in my rental car and took a bus up into Georgia. I flew from Savannah, Georgia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, and from there into La Guardia. I called Katy to tell her I was all right, but lied about where I was. I called Wit’s hotel room in L.A. He wasn’t in. I left a message for him to come home. The second I had hired Barto, our carefully thought out charade was over. I wished I hadn’t found out the hard way.
If, in my exhaustion, I had begun having second thoughts about the chain of violence, they vanished the moment I scanned the headlines at a newspaper stand outside the arrival gate.
The Post: IVAN THE TERMINAL
The News: IVAN TERRIBLE NO MORE
Newsday: RIKERS REVENGE
Anthony Murano, the brother of one of Ivan Alfonseca’s victims, had several weeks ago gotten himself purposely arrested. Yesterday, while both men were preparing to be bused to court, Murano attacked Alfonseca. Witnesses said it was all over in a flash, that Murano, a recently discharged army ranger, snapped Ivan’s neck like a twig. No one was shedding any tears. Lawyers from as far away as California were tripping over themselves volunteering to defend Murano. Did I think this was part of the master plan? No, not this. This was revenge, pure and simple. If anything about revenge can be pure and simple. Whatever it was, pure or not, it had made my task nearly impossible.
I took a cab to a hotel across the Grand Central Parkway. Inside my room, I called my brother. There are times when only family will do, and this was one of them.
Chapter Twenty
Aaron had done as I asked, made the phone calls, delivered the messages. He was an awfully efficient messenger. Everyone I had asked to call had called. Everyone I had asked to see had come. But I did not fool myself that it was all Aaron’s considerable salesmanship which had produced these remarkable results. It was as if the sense of inevitability which now dominated my waking hours had seeped into the lives of all the people connected to this case, from the perpetrators of the crimes to their accomplices to the people on the periphery. This case, which, in the end, was not about kidnapping or rape or even murder, but about a bicycle and a silly gang of wealthy boys who called themselves the James Deans. I clipped my old.38 to my belt, clicked off the room light, and checked the door handle behind me. Today, I had determined, the chain was to be broken. The violence that began twenty-six years and eleven months ago was going to come to an end.