Riley had marched into it all with careful but confident familiarity, his long coat open, his hands empty and swinging by his sides, but exuding the message that Willy knew to be true, that he was carrying his shotgun in a sling under his arm. Riley was on familiar ground and accordingly prepared.
Now they were inside the building, surrounded by the turbulence of neglect and anger. The stench of urine and rot permeated the air, the walls and floor were scarred, broken, and stained, and as covered with scrawled insignia as the interior of a jail cell. Distant screams and shouting echoed down the sepia-lit hallways.
They took the stairs, Riley not even bothering to see if the elevator worked, not just because it probably didn't, but also because elevators were dead-end boxes from which escape in a crisis was highly unlikely.
Several flights up, in a corridor similar to the one they'd entered, Riley turned right and strode an enormous distance, still not reaching the end, but coming to a door that was open by just a crack.
Instinctively, Riley flattened himself against the wall to one side of the door, as Willy did opposite him. Both men had their weapons out, all pretense at discretion gone.
Riley tapped on the door with his shotgun barrel. "Yo, Nate. You in there? It's Riley."
The sounds around them continued. The silence from inside the apartment did the same. Willy saw down the hall another door open slightly and then immediately close, followed by the loud click of a lock falling to.
"Nate. Come to the door."
After another pause, Riley used his gun to push the door back on its hinges, but remained out of sight. A small amount of light fell out onto the floor.
Riley made eye contact with Willy, held up three fingers, motioned to the right and left, and then folded each finger back into his fist in an inaudible countdown. At zero, they both swung through the door, Willy cutting to the right and Riley to the left. There they froze, ready to fire from crouching positions, but confronted only with a single shabby, empty room that looked like a tornado had recently ripped through it.
Again, communicating with hand signals, the two men spread out and checked the closet, behind and beneath the furniture, and looked into the bathroom. Nate wasn't home.
Willy holstered his pistol and closed the front door for privacy's sake. "He always this tidy or are we supposed to read something here?" he asked.
Riley was standing in the middle of the room. "Nah. This has been tossed something good."
Out of habit, Willy began poking around, looking for anything that might clarify what had happened. "What else did Nate say to you last time you saw him?" he asked rhetorically.
But Riley wasn't interested. "Gee, he told me he was going to get killed and who was going to do it. Must've slipped my mind."
Willy stared at him. "What's your problem? We don't even know he's been hurt."
Riley looked at him contemptuously. "Oh, right. They're holding him for ransom-his life for the Rolls. What the fuck you think was going to happen, asking him to poke his nose into drug business? You might as well have pulled the trigger yourself, the way I see it."
Willy's instinctive, angry denial was entirely fueled by guilt. "The way you see it is your problem. I came to him asking advice. Is it my fault he thought he owed me?"
Riley clenched his fist in frustration, and for a split second Willy wasn't sure the big man might not take a swing at him, which Willy would not have ducked. But then he turned on his heel, walked to the cracked window, and stared out at the night sky, letting out a heavy sigh after a long hesitation.
"He saw you as a turning point," he said, speaking to his own reflection in the glass. "Used to call you his crossroads. I been hearing about you for years, like you were some goddamn saint."
He turned to face Willy. "Then you show up, some half-nuts, scrawny cripple, and you get him screwed to the wall in no time flat. If that's what saints do, I'd just as soon pass."
Willy had nothing to say.
Riley seemed to pick up on the emotional riot occurring behind the silence, though, and reluctantly tried easing him off the hook. "I guess you're right," he admitted. "Nate was a big boy, and he knew how to stay out of trouble. You're just the only one I can blame."
Willy was looking at the floor, lost in thought. At that, he glanced up. "I'm good for it," he said.
But Riley wasn't having that, either. He slipped his shotgun back under his coat and turned on a few more lights. "Wallow all you want. I'd just as soon nail the asshole who did this. And if we're lucky, there's something around here that might give us a lead." Joe Gunther stepped off the commuter train onto the platform and looked around. Across the parking lot, the village of Mount Kisco, New York, spread out to the right and left, a bustling, upscale, redbrick town with a seemingly bulletproof look of security about it. Most of the cars he saw going past were the rolling equivalent of a year's salary.
"Wow," Sammie muttered. "Suburbia."
"High-end suburbia. Big distinction."
"And Bob Kunkle can afford to live here? Must be doing all right."
"He doesn't live here, Sam. He works here."
"Ah, right," she said. "Big distinction number two."
They crossed the parking lot, squinting against the bright morning sun. The train trip north had been leisurely and pleasant, since they'd been running against the commuter flow, and the village seemed equally peaceful, temporarily empty of most of its high-power residents. Gunther was struck with how, even in these modern times, most of the people he saw shopping or strolling along the street were wealthy-looking women, the only men being shopkeepers, a road crew, or the odd man in uniform, from a cop to a UPS driver. It was like taking a trip back to the fifties, albeit accompanied by a herd of modern SUVs.
"His store's on the main drag," Gunther explained, heading that way. "When I phoned him last night, he said to look for a London wannabe."
"I take it from that he's not the owner," Sammie commented.
"Manager," Joe explained briefly.
They found it easily enough, not just from the sign, but in fact from its faux-Brit aspirations. Crossing the threshold, he and Sammie were embraced by the smell of wood oil, rich wool, and the faint odor of pipe tobacco, although Gunther couldn't swear that last part wasn't his imagination.
"How are you?" asked a young man in an immaculate pin-stripe suit, silk tie, and a shirt with French cuffs.
"We're fine. We're here to see Bob Kunkle."
"Of course. Please wait here a moment. I'll go fetch him. Whom shall I say is calling?"
"Joe Gunther."
"I'll be right back," he announced unctuously, and slid soundlessly off toward the rear of the store.
"There's an eligible man for you, Sam," Joe said. "Once you were done with him, you could park him in the closet till next time."
Sammie was already wandering around the place, giving the fabric a feel and ogling the price tags. "Can you believe this stuff?"
A shadow emerged from the gloom at the back and another perfectly dressed man, older than the first, stepped forward, looking like a modern-day English butler, complete with vest and elegantly rounded stomach.
"Mr. Gunther? I'm Robert Kunkle."
With the younger salesman lurking in the distance, Joe introduced Sammie by name alone.
But Kunkle caught his meaning and suggested, "Why don't we talk somewhere more private?"
He led them down the length of the store, but not to his office. He'd taken his brother back there years before when he'd dropped by for a visit, and Bob had never forgotten the look in Willy's eyes at the contrast between the ancient, feudal glow of the sales area and the fluorescentlit concrete gulag where Bob tallied the books. It had revealed more to Bob about the discomfort between the siblings than words ever could have, and wasn't something he wanted to repeat, even with total strangers.