The Sniper's Wife

Chapter 14

Willy let Riley take the lead. They were in a high-rise- a cast-off, damaged monument to urban renewal, the likes of which dotted the city's landscape like smallpox. Cereal-box-shaped buildings with small windows often covered with plywood, overlooking abandoned concrete playgrounds that had only nestled children in the architect's imagination. The hard, open approaches to the building had been littered and devoid of life, with fragments of shattered glass that crunched underfoot. In the shadows beyond the harsh and sporadic lighting of the few still-functioning arc lamps, they'd heard people moving about, and the sounds of threatening murmurs. It had made Willy think of the jungle again, but not brought him back to it, for while this battlefield was just as ominous, it remained strange and remote-a wilderness cast in steel and brick, inhabited by warriors without hope or goal.

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.

He ushered them instead into a changing area designed to make his customers feel like English lords. Along with the standard dais surrounded by mirrors, there were leather armchairs, side tables, reading material, a wall of unread books with fancy leather bindings, and a silver tea set on a sideboard. The lighting was tasteful and intimate, and the rug deep enough to tickle your ankles.

Bob invited them to sit, which they all did, before asking, "Is Willy all right?"

"We think so," Gunther answered matter-of-factly. "That's one of the reasons we're here. Have you heard from him?"

Bob nodded. "A few days ago. We met near where our mom lives. He told me about Mary. What a shock."

Sammie was comfortable enough being away from the city and the odd kind of diplomacy they'd been practicing there to speak up as she might have back home. "What was the reason for your meeting? You two aren't all that close, are you?"

Gunther looked at her in surprise, thinking her approach had been overly direct, but it had the right effect on Bob. He laughed sadly. "Yeah, you could say that. I've had enemies I spend more time with." He paused briefly and then answered the question. "He wanted to know what I could tell him about Mary."

"Why would you know about her?" she asked.

"She started calling about six months ago. I don't know how Willy knew that, but he wanted to know why. I told him I thought she was just reaching out after cleaning herself up-and wanting to know how he was doing. I wasn't very helpful, I'm afraid. After he told me she'd died, I got angry at him and the conversation sort of ended."

"As brother's go," Joe Gunther commented, "he must be a little high-maintenance."

Again, Bob let out a short laugh. "You kidding? He's no maintenance at all. It's his way or the highway, and you get to do all the lifting." He ran his palm across his bald pate in exasperation. "I can't blame him, though. When it came time to hand out the bad luck, Willy was first in line. I don't know that I could've dealt with half the shit he has. I mean, I know he's a pain and a bully, but he's a real straight shooter, you know? Mary's dead by her own hand, from what he told me, but he's still going to find out why. It's just his way."

"Is that what he told you?" Sammie asked.

Bob looked over at her but didn't seem to have heard. "He hasn't talked to our mom in years, he's insulting to my wife, and he's never even met my kids, but if I were in a jam, he's the one I'd want to come after me. He's like a bulldog that way."

Sammie smiled at the description. Over the last several days, she'd done her best to keep her own emotions to one side, being Joe's faithful sidekick and Willy's steady colleague. But she loved Willy Kunkle, and was being torn apart by what he was going through, and it was all she could do not to cross the room and give his brother a hug. He'd fallen under Willy's truly bizarre charm just as she and Joe Gunther had. Either that or only they had recognized the value of not heeding his tremendous ability to reject people. In point of fact, Bob's sketch of Willy's stubborn tenacity alone might as well have been used on Joe Gunther, and, now that she thought of it, herself as well.

"Did he say anything at all that might help us find him?" she asked.

He gave her a hapless expression.

Gunther cleared his throat softly. "Bob, you said Willy questioned you about Mary. What had she been up to?"

"Basically putting her life back together. She got a job at a drug rehab place near her home called the Re-Coop and she was trying to put some money away."

"She was taking birth control pills," Sammie said. "You know why?"

Bob flushed red. "I didn't ask her things like that."

"What about right after she and Willy broke up?" Gunther asked. "Were you in touch with her then?"

"A little bit, at first. She was hurt and confused, and pretty frightened. Willy really went over the top with her, I guess. She told me he'd hit her, just once, but that was enough. He was in a pretty bad way back then, drinking hard and acting strange. I heard later it might've been posttraumatic stress disorder or something-maybe had to do with what he did in Vietnam. But he never talked about that, and I was always too scared to ask."

Sammie understood what he meant. The Willy she knew was further from the edge, but that particular topic was still hypersensitive. "What was she up to down here?" she asked him.

"Escaping, I guess is the best way to describe it, although I had my doubts she knew what she was doing. If I was in her condition, the last place I'd come to start over would be New York. Unless you have someone to turn to, it can be the loneliest place on earth."

"Was there a someone?"

"Eventually, yeah. His name was Andy Liptak-an old war buddy of Willy's. I only met him once, and he seemed nice enough, but I guess he had other things on his mind than taking care of Mary. He was out to make a buck, and I think she kind of drifted off, in a way. You know, got into things she shouldn't have."

"You mean the drugs?"

"Well, yeah. Once she started with them, it was like Willy had been with the booze. Kind of ironic, when you think about it. That she ended up like he'd been. Anyhow, she and Andy broke up. No surprise there."

Joe Gunther was picking up something in his voice, just a hint of evasiveness, as when someone moves solely to avoid becoming a target.

"Bob," he asked, "you told us Mary called you right after she and Willy broke up, and about six months before she died. Both times in which she was going through a quantum change. Were you and she good friends when she was married to Willy?"

Bob looked at him nervously. "We were friendly, the few times we met. I mean, she was up there in Vermont, and they only came down one time so she could see the city. She always struck me as a nice person."

"A person who could have done better than your brother when it came to husbands?"

Bob was fidgeting with his fingers, intertwining them in various ways. He flashed a false smile and said, "Well, that's probably true for any woman who'd marry Willy. Not that he's a bad man, of course. But he's tough to live with. I sure know that much."

"So, you sympathized with Mary."

"Well, yeah. Who wouldn't?"

"Which is why you visited her when she called you after the breakup."

Bob glanced at Sammie and then back at Joe. "I… ah… gosh, I might have. I forget. Long time ago. I remember the phone calls, although, like I said, she talked to Junie more than me. You know, girl stuff, I guess."

"Junie's your wife?"

His eyes widened. "My wife? I told you-"

Gunther hardened his tone, driving a wedge into the gap he'd opened by pure chance. "You didn't mention Junie to us, Bob. Maybe you used that line on Willy. Do they get along-Willy and Junie?"

"No."

"Then it's unlikely they'd compare notes. How many times did you go to see Mary, Bob?"

Bob's voice was thin and tight. "I told you. I don't remember."

"First it was never, then once, now so many times you can't remember."

"You're twisting my words."

Sammie ganged up on him from her side, now fully aware of what Gunther was after. "Bob, it's not a crime what you did, not that we can't treat it like one-check your phone records, look for witnesses who saw you together, talk to your wife about any unexplained trips."

Bob stared at them for a moment of absolute silence, and then burst into tears, covering his face with his hands.

Gunther got up and handed him a handkerchief from his back pocket, making Sammie wonder incongruously how many men still carried such items.

"Bob," Gunther said kindly, "it might help to get it off your chest. Chances are it won't go any further than this room."

Bob didn't seem to have heard the equivocal nature of the phrase. Through his hands, he confessed. "I didn't know what was happening at first. She was so lost, so unhappy. What Willy had done to her, casting her off. It was so cruel. I know he had it tough over there, but lots of people went through that without making everyone around them miserable, too. It's like Willy has to dominate every person he meets."

"What about Mary?" Gunther asked gently.

"She was a mess when she came to the city. She didn't know what to do, who to turn to, had no idea how to get a job. She was too shy to call Liptak right off. I just helped her out at first, got her an apartment, stuff like that."

"But without telling Junie."

He shuddered, took his hands away, and straightened slightly in his seat, looking at them in a hangdog way. "I told her about the first call, but not about afterward. Not that anything happened at first. Neither one of us was looking to do anything wrong, but things had been rough at home for me, and Mary was totally at loose ends." His voice trailed off and then he added weakly, "I guess we just sort of found comfort in each other's company for a while."

"How long did it last?"

He wiped his eyes with the borrowed handkerchief. "Not long. Maybe a couple of months. I wasn't the kind of man she was after, and I was too torn up with guilt to let it last much longer. It wasn't even that good while it lasted."

"Does your brother know anything about it?"

Bob sighed heavily. "I'm alive, aren't I?"

Joe Gunther thought that was a little melodramatic, but supposed Bob had to cling to a few misconceptions to maintain his dignity. "Well," he said, "since all that's out of the bag, maybe you can tell us a little more about Mary."

But Bob still wasn't so sure, and answered vaguely, "It didn't take her long to get comfortable in the city. She was thirsty for a change and angry at her life up till then-told me just before we split up that Willy had done her a favor. I guess that didn't turn out to be so true, after all."

"You implied there were other men," Sammie suggested.

He nodded sadly. "Even before we were finished. She was like a starving man at a feast. It made her very exciting to be with-for a while."

"So, you lived with the infidelities."

"Sure. What choice does a guy like me have? It was a miracle I got a part of her at all. Christ, I was grateful. I told myself it added to her sexiness." He slumped forward again, his elbows on his knees. "After it was over, I couldn't believe what I'd done. Junie must've thought I'd lost my mind, I spent so much attention on her. I suppose, in that way, Mary helped save my marriage."

"What about just recently?" Gunther asked. "Who made the first move to get in touch?"

Bob straightened, suddenly on surer footing. "She did, and this time Junie did know about it. There was nothing romantic there, anyhow. Mary just seemed to want to contact the people from her past she could trust. She even apologized for what had happened between us. It was like she was going back in time, repairing bridges."

Now his sorrow seemed genuinely about her, instead of inwardly focused. He added, "I just can't believe she died of an overdose. She sounded so sure of herself. So happy to be free."

"Including the very last time you spoke?" Sammie asked.

"Yes," he said incredulously. "That's what I'm saying. I really thought she'd licked it."

"I'd like to back up a little," Joe Gunther said. "When the two of you were together and she was beginning to act differently, was she already into drugs?"

"She'd smoke a joint. Said it relaxed her."

"Anything more serious?"

"She talked about it. Said she wondered what it would be like to get high on coke or heroin, but I don't think she ever tried it while I was around."

"Who supplied her with the joints?" Sammie asked.

"I assumed it was one of her boyfriends."

"You ever get to meet any of them?"

He shook his head. "Only Liptak. Once. It was at a party Mary threw at her apartment. But he was the only one I know of for sure. And it took a while before they actually did set up house."

"Tell us about Liptak," Gunther suggested.

"I don't know much except that he and Willy served together. That's how Mary met him. Willy introduced them on a trip to New York right after they were married. That's what I meant about Willy's bad luck, see?"

Gunther decided to leave that one alone. "Was Andy into drugs?"

"I think so. She called me a few times after they started living together," Bob said. "She sounded like she was on cloud nine, but sort of detached, too, you know what I mean? Like the reason she was having so much fun was so she wouldn't have to ask questions she didn't want answered."

In the silence that followed that statement, he added, "I can't swear to it, but it seemed like they were a matched pair."

"What happened with this Andy Liptak?"

"That's what Willy wanted to know. I told him: Nothing. Far as I know, he's making a lot of money being a wheeler-dealer in Brooklyn. He and Mary broke up after a few years."

"When was that?"

"I don't know dates, but it's not like she left him and then started calling me right after. In fact, I think it was after they broke up that she really hit bottom."

"You have an address on Liptak?"

Bob shook his head. "No. Never did. He shouldn't be hard to find, though. I think he's pretty rich. He called me," he added almost as an afterthought. "Just recently."

Sammie and Joe glanced at one another. "What about?" Gunther asked nonchalantly.

"He wanted to know how she was doing. Said he was married now and just got to thinking one day, sort of reliving old times."

"You tell him about her?"

"What little I knew, sure. He was happy she was bouncing back."

"Did he ask where she was living?" Sammie asked.

Bob thought back. "I don't think so. I couldn't have told him anyway."

"How 'bout Willy, Bob?" Gunther asked after a pause. "If you don't know where he is, can you think where he might be? Friends he had when he lived here, old haunts?"

Totally recovered now from his emotional breakdown, Bob gave them a chastened, war-weary look. "I don't know how long you've known my brother, but I wouldn't go looking for any old friends. He didn't make friends, and if for some reason someone tried it with him instead, he made sure it wouldn't last."

Gunther glanced at Sammie at that, but she was staring at the carpeted floor.

He rose to his feet. "Thanks, Bob. You've been a big help. And for what it's worth, I think having you in his life has helped Willy a lot, even if he'd never admit it."

Bob smiled weakly. "I guess that's good to hear."