You had to admire Steven Brightman. He was out and ready for jogging early, the sun barely hinting at its arrival. Far enough away that he wouldn’t notice me, but close enough to see his face, I watched him stretch for five minutes on the steps of his brownstone. Although he could not have anticipated what was about to happen, he had to have some idea that the things he had so skillfully manipulated for so many years were about to spin wildly out of control. Yet his calm expression never changed. If he was frightened or worried, he didn’t show it. I could not make the same boast.
When he started down the block toward me, I was almost tempted to stay hidden and let him pass. I couldn’t. Like with Barto, I would probably get only one chance. In spite of his cool, collected demeanor, he wouldn’t be expecting this, not here, not now. I needed him off balance, but also feeling he had the upper hand. He struck me as the type of man who would always feel he had the upper hand. As he ran past, I stepped out from behind some brownstone steps.
He startled. “For chrissakes, what the fuck-Prager?”
“We need to talk.”
“You look like shit. Go home. Shave and shower, then call me later. We can talk about anything you want then.”
“Now!” I whispered angrily, letting him see the barrel of my gun pointing at his belly.
“Okay. What’s this about?”
“I just got back from Florida.”
“How nice for you.” He sneered. “You don’t look like you got much of a tan.”
“Barto tried to kill me.”
“Who?”
“Look, Brightman, we can do this a few ways.”
“And they would be …?”
“One is I hand you my pistol, let you pat me down to see I’m not wearing a wire, and we have a talk out here in the nice empty street about compensation.”
“I’m listening.”
“The other is I stick this gun in your ribs and take you for a ride.”
“You won’t kill me.”
“You’re right, I won’t, but John Heaton’ll be happy to. You ever meet his friends Rocky and Preacher Simmons? They won’t need much encouragement, Brightman, and I bet you I can be awfully fucking convincing.”
That put a chink in his armor. Though he was still smiling at me with his mouth, his eyes had withdrawn from the performance. They were too busy sizing me up.
“Tick … tick … tick …” I waved the.38 from side to side. “Clock’s running.”
“What is it you think you know?”
Good. Good. He’d given me an opening. I held my revolver out to him, flat in my palm, my finger nowhere near the trigger.
“It’s one or the other, Brightman, no free samples. It’s a limited menu. We talk or you die; those are your choices.”
He swiped the.38 out of my hand and stuffed it in the waistband of his shorts. Without him asking, I removed my shirt and spun around slowly. I put the shirt back on. I spread my legs and let him run his hands and up and down both legs, inside my socks.
“Check under my balls,” I instructed.
He laughed, but did it anyway. I moved to the car parked closest to us, sat on the fender, and removed my shoes and socks.
“Okay?” I asked.
“Not yet.” He looked down the block in either direction, stepped into the street to see if he could spot anyone lurking about. The early Sunday sky was a bit brighter now, and the new light afforded him a pretty good view. Satisfied that we were alone, he said: “Talk.”
“I want you to know that I think you’re a piece of shit and if I was able to prove anything I was about to say, we wouldn’t be having this little chitchat. I’d throw the proof up in the air between the DA and John Heaton and let them fight for it like a jump ball. Fortunately for you, all I got is a bag full of circumstance and supposition.”
“Why not open the bag and let me have a look?” he said, his eyes still locked on my face. “Then maybe we can determine the value of your assets.”
“Let’s start with the James Deans.”
“The James Deans … You’re very good, Prager. What a bunch of jerks we were. You know, one other person’s mentioned them to me in twenty-seven years.”
“Yes, I know. Kyle Lawrence, the boy who helped you murder Carl Stipe. He’s one of the missing pieces. Something happened around the time of his death that caught Moira’s attention. That’s why you had to kill her. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
There was no denial. Brightman said nothing. He didn’t have to. The cocky smile he’d been showing me for the last several minutes slid off his face. He noticed me notice.
“As you were saying …”
“Okay, so to get into the James Deans you had to take a scalp, steal something, right? You had balls, so you took the Hallworth Harrier. Mike stole a box of sanitary napkins from Wiggman’s. Pete grabbed Mr. Hart’s glasses. Jeff was a pussy and stole his father’s watch. That leaves Kyle. What did Kyle steal? Mike Day told me that no one but you knew and you vouched for him. What did he steal, Senator?”
“It’s impolite to ask questions you think you know the answers to, Mr. Prager. Didn’t your mama ever teach you that?”
“She was too busy teaching me not to steal and murder. The way I figure it, you and Kyle saw Carl Stipe’s bike outside Ronny Bishop’s house. You knew he would take the shortcut through the woods to get to his house. What a scalp that bike would be, and from the mayor’s kid, no less. It was close to Halloween, right? So you two got your masks and went into the woods to wait for him. How’m I doing.”
“It’s all very fascinating, so far.”
“So Carl comes riding by and one of you shoves a stick through his front wheel and he topples over, headfirst. You should’ve just taken the bike and split, but, of all things, one of you is worried the kid might really be hurt. So Kyle or you go to check on him. A fatal mistake. When you get close, he rips off your mask and sees who you are. Then he starts screaming and struggling. He threatens to tell. You threaten him back. If he doesn’t shut up, you’re going to kill him. Now he’s panicked and struggles harder, screams louder. You ask Kyle to help hold him down, but the kid still won’t shut up. One of you reaches for something to shove into his mouth to quiet him-the stick you used to knock him off the bike.
“You shove it in to scare him, but it’s gone too deep. It snaps. Now the kid’s gasping for breath, struggling even harder because you are going to kill him. You’re panicked too. You have to kill him. You ram the stick in again and again. Then the kid’s dead. You take the bike and split. I think maybe you weighted it down and threw it into the reservoir. I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me where the bike is?”
He actually started laughing. “If you knew where the bicycle was, you’d have more than supposition and circumstance, wouldn’t you? We couldn’t have that.”
“Okay, all right,” I relented, “you can’t give me any physical proof. I didn’t suppose you would. But I want to know who killed the Stipe kid. You don’t have to say a word. Was it you?”
He shook his head no. He was shrewd. He knew that if he asked me the same question, my reaction would be much the same. It would hold no water in court, but I wasn’t worried about the rules of evidence at the moment.
“I know you were a bright and ballsy kid, Brightman,” I moved on, “but I was confused about the statement you and Kyle made to the cops afterward. Even if you had thought to do it, to go to the cops and feed them a story about a drifter leaving the woods on a bicycle, I couldn’t picture any fourteen-year-old clever enough to know just exactly what to say. Most kids would have given themselves away, saying too much or too little. You and Kyle, though, gave just the proper amount of detail to throw suspicion away from you, but not enough to point at any one person in particular. Then I realized that had to be your father’s doing. He would know what to say, how to say it, and to whom. He would know how to keep your names out of it, how to get the cops to shield your identities. He knew, huh? All these years, he knew.”