“Look-”
“Did Barto come to you or was it the other way around? Doesn’t matter. Barto sees that Ivan Alfonseca’s been arrested for all these rapes in the boroughs. He remembers Alfonseca from when he worked as a marshal in South Florida. He waits for Alfonseca to get convicted on enough counts so he’d have nothing to lose by confessing to Moira’s murder. Barto arranges to have the family back in Cuba paid off. During trips to Rikers, his lawyers bring him the office sign-in sheets to fill out. He is given a story to remember about how he killed Moira and where he planted the jewelry. Now all you need is a patsy to think he’s discovering all this on his own. That’s where I come in. The timing was just too perfect. After two years, you just had to have me now. Why? I kept asking myself. Why?”
“It certainly wasn’t your charm,” Brightman said. “I shall have to have a talking-to with the man who recommended you. He assured me you’d be adequately incompetent.”
“Really, and who was that?”
“Let’s get on with this, Prager.”
“I’m curious about how you handled Spivack. My instinct is you and Barto kept him in the dark. Although he’d already been compromised, there was no need to involve him until he couldn’t do anything about it. On the other hand, he might have been a part of it as long as he thought you were innocent. Or you might’ve had more on him than I’m aware of. I guess I’ll never know.”
“The man did kill himself. I don’t think he did that because he was depressed over his wardrobe.”
“You did almost everything right, even lying about having slept with Moira. That was brilliant. It took my attention away from any other reason you might have to do away with her. Once I was convinced it wasn’t about an affair, I stopped thinking of you as a suspect. And you deserve a lot of credit for having the foresight to keep some of Moira’s jewelry. That’s what sold everyone on Alfonseca. Almost everything broke your way. Spivack killed himself. Alfonseca’s dead. I don’t know where Barto is. The thing is, if you’d only hired some other poor schmuck besides me, you’d have gotten away with it.”
“Oh, but I have, Moe. Like you said, your brilliant oratory is just so much smoke. It’s completely valueless. None of it would stand up in court, and if your pal Wit ever tries to print a word of this, he knows I’d sue and win.”
“I don’t suppose I could appeal to your humanity and ask you to come with me and turn yourself in?”
“Humanity! Are you nuts? I’m a politician.”
“Then just tell me where Moira’s body really is and the bicycle, too. These families have suffered enough.” I raised my right hand. “I give you my word, I won’t mention you at all.”
“Sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, how’s about you take my revolver and blow the back of your head off.”
“Once again, I must disappoint you,” he said as calmly as if I’d asked him to pick up some flour for me at the store.
“How about I go to your brownstone and tell your wife what you’ve done?”
“Be my guest. Unfortunately she’s away with friends, but I’ll have her call you when she gets back. She wouldn’t believe a word of this.”
I ripped my.38 out of his waistband and pressed the barrel to his head. “How about I blow your brains all over the street?”
He didn’t look scared until I pulled back the hammer.
“All right, Prager, what is it you want?”
“Nothing,” I said. “You’ve already given me what I wanted.”
“What?”
I pulled the trigger. Click. The front of Brightman’s running shorts got dark with moisture and a stream of urine ran down his bare leg.
“You fuck. It was empty.”
“Old cop rule: Never give a murderer a loaded weapon.”
He twisted up his face into a mass of red distortion. “You’re not getting a fucking penny from me now, you asshole.”
“How’s it feel, thinking you’re gonna die? I bet you Moira and Carl didn’t piss themselves.”
“Carl shit himself, the little screaming bastard. What a fucking baby. All he cared about was what his father would say if he didn’t fight for that stupid fucking bicycle.”
“He was a little boy, for chrissakes!”
“Not a penny, you hear me?”
“Like I said, you’ve already given me what I want.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
I didn’t answer, but walked up the brownstone steps and rapped on the front door. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
It took a few seconds, but the door swung back. Brightman’s wife, Katerina, was first out. Her eyes were rimmed in red, silent tears staining her perfect face. Her presence wasn’t strictly necessary, but I had wanted so much to punish Brightman. His career would be over. Geary would see to that. Somehow, that wasn’t enough. I wanted him to hurt, to suffer, to lose someone he loved the way the Stipes and Heatons had.
Thomas Geary was next through the door, his rugged good looks intact. He shed no tears over Brightman. There were always other horses, other races to run. If not exactly responsible for Moira’s death, he was not guiltless, either. His money had helped finance Moira’s execution. Though no pauper, Brightman could never have afforded to pay off Spivack, Barto, Alfonseca, Morenos, and the like without raising an eyebrow. Geary didn’t ask where the money was going, because he didn’t want to know. He had admitted as much to me in my noisy hotel room across the way from La Guardia.
“Looking back,” he confessed, “there were a thousand questions I should have asked. It was the same about hiring you. Though we both trusted the man who recommended you, I was quite skeptical. You had no track record to speak of, and frankly, Constance thought you were a bit of a pushover as a boss. Your brother sounded more qualified. Now, in all honesty, I wish I had hired him.”
“That makes two of us.”
Brightman’s face, red with fury, went starkly white and blank. He was naked before the world for the first time since his birth. He stared at the open windows on the first floor of the brownstone, realizing Katerina and Geary had heard every word. Still, none of it would holdup in a court of law. But there are other courts in which to try a man, and places in the cosmos where the statute of limitations never ever applies.
Epilogue
If the last fifteen years had taught me anything, it was that there was no justice in this world. There’s nothing particularly original or profound in coming to that conclusion. All grown-ups come to it in the end. Coming to it, however, has set me free. It lets me sleep at night while men like Steven Brightman walk unfettered among us. Actually, I’m not sure where he’s walking these days. I lost track of him when he disappeared from the headlines.
Within a week of our bit of street theater, Brightman made big news when he resigned his office and withdrew from politics altogether. He and Katerina flew to the Caribbean shortly thereafter and got a divorce. Hurting her that way is the only regret I have about how I handled that day. Sometimes I think it would have been enough to have had only Geary there to hear. In formulating my plan, I had convinced myself that I was protecting Katerina, that I could not let her continue to sleep in the same bed with a man who had, in the course of his life, murdered a nine-year-old boy and a twenty-three-year-old woman. Now I find myself wondering if I hadn’t just wanted to punish Brightman. Had I punished Katerina instead?
Thomas Geary was good to his word. As long as I didn’t go public with what I knew, he would make sure none of us suffered from the truth. Larry Mac and Rob Gloria kept their promotions. Though we have never discussed it, I suspect Larry McDonald has figured out what actually happened, or a version of it. Like I said, Larry was a good cop, a very good cop. But in his way he was as ambitious as Steven Brightman had been, and could not be bothered with the details of how he got to where he wanted to go. Rob Gloria wasn’t a gift-horse-looking kind of guy and probably never gave a second thought to Brightman’s resignation. We don’t talk much, Gloria and I.