Duane says nothing.
Then Dennis slices open one of the packages and pulls out a bag of
Heroin.
212
“Uh-oh,” Dennis says.
To which Duane responds
213
“Tell Leonard he’s a dead man.”
214
Leonard knows.
Ben sits in his apartment and thinks.
It isn’t exactly justice for the murders, but it will do.
Part of the deal was that Dennis promised federal instead of state prosecution, which he can do because of the quantity involved.
So Ten to twenty years on that quantity of marijuana. A twenty-year minimum on the heroin, proximity to a school, possession of a firearm. And there’s no “good time” on a federal sentence. You serve the full sentence.
The likelihood is that Crowe dies in prison.
Brian comes out an old man.
And they’ll try to kill me.
But the trade-off is worth it.
For a little justice.
215
Thing is, Dennis isn’t so interested in justice.
More in promotion.
It’s like a TV game show.
You work your way up the pyramid to the big prize.
He explains this concept to Crowe, but starts off in biblical terms:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he says to Crowe, who sits on the other side of the metal table. “No one comes to the Father-in this case Uncle Sam-except through me.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“In my Father’s house are many rooms,” Dennis says, “and you can occupy one of them for many, many years, or-”
“What?”
“Let me put this in profane terms,” Dennis says. “You are totally, completely, utterly fucked. You are more fucked than two teenage virgins on their wedding night. You are more fucked than the volunteer subject at a Viagra test. You are more fucked than-”
“Okay, okay.”
“Duane,” Dennis says. “This is a win-win for me. I can get out of the game now and win, or I can stay in the game and win. If I get out of the game now, you lose big, but if you can persuade me to stay in the game a little longer, you might lose less. Are you following along here?”
“No.”
Now Dennis gets into the pyramid bit.
“It’s a pyramid,” Dennis says. “In my game, we try to go to the top of the pyramid. Right now, I have you somewhere about middle-high pyramid. Now, we can stop there, collect our money, and you go to federal prison for the next thirty or forty years, or you can give me the people at the top of the pyramid and then we have a new game, i.e., Let’s Make a Deal.”
“They’ll kill me,” Duane says.
“We can work on that,” Dennis says, “depending on what you can give me. We can talk sending you to a very safe facility, we can talk about the Witness Protection Program-note the key word ‘witness,’ Duane-we might even be able to talk about you walking away from all of this, but first I need names, and I need to hear you say you’re willing to wear a wire.”
“I want a lawyer,” Duane says.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Dennis says, “for your sake. Think about it. You call that lawyer you’re thinking about, the first thing he does when he leaves here is he goes to the guys at the top of the pyramid and tells them that you’ve been busted. Then your options are severely limited because those guys aren’t going to talk to you anymore, and I can’t reward you for conversations you can’t have. But you have the right to an attorney, and by all means you can-”
“I’ll hold off a little bit,” Duane says.
“To think, ” Dennis says. “Exactly. So while you’re thinking, think about this-”
216
“One, you’re not the only player in the game,” Dennis says. “I’m going to talk to Mr. Hennessy now, and if he rings the bell first
… fuck you. So don’t take too long to think, but do think about
…
“Two-a question, to wit…
“Are the guys you want to be loyal to going to be loyal to you?” Dennis asks. “Or, if and when they do find out you’re looking at thirty to life, are they going to decide it’s not worth the risk and have you clipped anyway? In which case, your loyalty to them is moot. And so I return to my original theme…
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Dennis 4:16.
217
“I don’t want to go to jail for the rest of my life,” Brian says.
Dennis laughs at him. “Who gives a flying fuck about what you want? This is only about what I want. And you’d better start thinking real hard about what it is that I want. One, two, three, go.”
It’s painful watching Brian try to string his thoughts together to form one line of cause and effect.
Dennis runs out of patience.
“Let me be the local news,” he says, “and tell you what’s happening in your world. You think you don’t want to spend the rest of your life behind bars? Your buddy Crowe really doesn’t. In fact, I just left him because I needed to get a new box of Kleenex, he’s been crying and snuffling and sniffling so much in there. Are you ready for this? He’s trying to give me you for the Munson murders.”
Because, for all his corruption, Dennis is a man of his word.
He promised Ben Leonard that he’d try. And one look at Brian’s eyes, Dennis knows it’s true. He and Crowe killed the Munson kid and the girl.
“What?!” Brian yelps.
“Yup,” Dennis pushes. “He says you pulled the trigger. He’s got the needle pointed right at your fucking arm.”
“No way. He-”
Brian stops short.
“We know it was one of you,” Dennis says. “The question is, which?”
Neglecting to mention that it doesn’t fucking matter who actually pulled the trigger. But if Brian doesn’t know that, tough shit. Ignorance has its costs. If you’re going to be a criminal-know the fucking law, asshole.
“I don’t think it was you,” Dennis says. “You don’t strike me as the type who’d kill a girl. You just don’t. I think it was Duane, but he’s in there sobbing that he watched you do it… he has nightmares… ‘Brian just blew her brains out. He was laughing as he did it.’ Juries love that shit, Brian.”
Brian gets this look of feral cunning on his face.
“Wouldn’t I be guilty anyway, though?” he asks. “Even if I was just there? Which I wasn’t, but if I was?”
Goddamn it, Dennis thinks. If there’s anything he hates it’s a half-intelligent skell with a little information. Law amp; Order has totally fucked up the interview room.
“True,” Dennis says. “But there are distinctions in terms of sentencing. One of you gets life, the other gets the cocktail. Which you’re not going to think is a big distinction until they strap you down, and then you’re going to think it is, because Duane will still be eating meals and taking shits and jerking off, and you… well, they say it’s painless, but they say a lot of things, don’t they?”
Brian toughens up. “I don’t know anything about those killings.”
“That’s too bad,” Dennis says, “because now you can’t give me what I want.”
He starts out the door, then stops and turns.
“If you haven’t already figured this out,” Dennis says, “Duane and the boys can’t risk keeping you around.”
“You’re saying they’re going to kill me?”
“No, they’re going to give you a pony,” Dennis says. “What the fuck you think they’re gonna do?”
Dipshit.
218
Lado has kept one of them alive.
To watch the dissection of his friends and learn.
The man is naked and chained to a wall, and now Lado takes the point of the bloody knife and presses it into the man’s stomach, just enough to draw blood.