Gone for Good

44

I did not argue. I did not call their bluff or demand a phone call or any of that. I did not even ask them where we were going. Such protestations at this delicate juncture would, I knew, be either superfluous or harmful.

Pistillo had warned me to stay away. He had gone so far as to have me arrested for a crime I did not commit. He'd promised to frame me if need be. And still I had not backed down. I wondered where I'd unearthed this new-found bravery and I realized that it was simply a matter of having nothing more to lose. Maybe that was what bravery always is being past the point of giving a rat's ass. Sheila and my mother were dead. My brother had been lost to me. You corner a man, even one as weak as this one, and you see the animal emerge.

We pulled up to a row of houses in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Everywhere I looked I saw the same thing: tidy lawns, overdone flower beds, rusted once-white furniture, hoses snaking through the grass attached to sprinklers that vacillated in a lazy haze. We approached a house no different from any other. Fisher tried the knob. It was unlocked. They led me through a room with a pink sofa and console TV. Photographs of two boys ran along the top of the console. The photos were in age order, starting with two infants. In the last one, the boys, both teenagers now, were formally dressed, each bussing a cheek of a woman I assumed was their mother.

The kitchen had a swing door. Pistillo sat at the Formica table with an iced tea. The woman in the photograph, the probable mother, stood by the sink. Fisher and

Wilcox made themselves scarce. I stayed standing.

"You have my phone tapped," I said.

Pistillo shook his head. "A tap just tells you where a call originated. What we're using here are listening devices. And just so we're clear, they were court ordered."

"What do you want from me?" I asked him.

"The same thing I've wanted for eleven years," he said. "Your brother."

The woman at the sink turned on the faucet. She rinsed out a glass. More photos, some with the woman, some with Pistillo and other youngsters but again mostly the same two boys, had been hung on the refrigerator by magnets. These were more recent and casual shots at the shore, in the yard, that kind of thing.

Pistillo said, "Maria?"

The woman shut off the water and turned toward him.

"Maria, this is Will Klein. Will, Maria."

The woman I assumed that this was Pistillo's wife dried her hands on a dish towel. Her grip was firm.

"Nice to meet you," she said a little too formally.

I mumbled and nodded, and when Pistillo signaled, I sat on a metal chair with vinyl padding.

"Would you like something to drink, Mr. Klein?" Maria asked me.

"No, thank you."

Pistillo raised his glass of iced tea. "Dynamite stuff. You should have a glass."

Maria kept hovering. I finally accepted the iced tea just so we could move on. She took her time pouring and putting the glass in front of me. I thanked her and tried a smile. She tried one back, but it flickered even weaker than mine.

She said, "I'll wait in the other room, Joe."

"Thanks, Maria."

She pushed through the swinging door.

"That's my sister," he said, still looking at the door she'd just gone through. He pointed to the snapshots on the refrigerator. "Those are her two boys. Vic Junior is eighteen now. Jack is sixteen."

"Uh-huh." I folded my hands and rested them on the table. "You've been listening in on my calls."

"Yes."

"Then you already know that I don't have a clue where my brother is."

He took a sip of the iced tea. "That I do." He was still staring at the refrigerator; he head-gestured for me to do likewise. "You notice anything missing from those pictures?"

"I'm really not in the mood for games, Pistillo."

"No, me neither. But take a longer look. What's missing?"

I did not bother to look because I already knew. "The father."

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me like a game show host. "Got it on the first try," he said. "Impressive."

"What the hell is this?"

"My sister lost her husband twelve years ago. The boys, well, you can do the math on your own. They were six and four. Maria raised them on her own. I pitched in where I could, but an uncle isn't a father, you know what I mean?"

I said nothing.

"His name was Victor Dober. That name mean anything to you?"

"No."

"Vic was murdered. Shot twice in the head execution-style." He drained his iced tea and then added, "Your brother was there."

My heart lurched inside my chest. Pistillo stood, not waiting for a reaction. "I know my bladder is going to regret this, Will, but I'm going to have another glass. You want anything while I'm up?"

I tried to work through the shock. "What do you mean, my brother was there?"

But Pistillo was taking his time now. He opened the freezer, took out an ice tray, broke it open in the sink. The cubes clattered against the ceramic. He fished some out with his hand and filled his glass. "Before we begin, I want you to make a promise."

"What?"

"It involves Katy Miller."

"What about her?"

"She's just a kid."

"I know that."

"This is a dangerous situation. You don't have to be a genius to figure that out. I don't want her getting hurt again."

"Neither do I."

"So we agree then," he said. "Promise me, Will. Promise me you won't involve her anymore."

I looked at him and I knew that point was not negotiable. "Okay," I said. "She's out."

He checked my face, looking for the lie, but on this point he was right. Katy had already paid a huge price. I'm not sure I could stand it if she was forced to pay a higher one.

"Tell me about my brother," I said.

He finished pouring the iced tea and settled back into his chair. He looked at the table and then raised his eyes. "You read in the paper about the big busts," Pistillo began. "You read about how the Fulton Fish Market's been cleaned up. You see the parade of old men doing the perp walk on the news, and you think, those days are over. The mob is gone. The cops have won."

He finished pouring the iced tea and sat back down. My own throat suddenly felt parched, sandy, as if it might close up altogether. I took a deep sip from my glass. The tea was too sweet.

"Do you know anything about Darwin?" he asked.

I thought the question was rhetorical, but he waited for an answer. I said, "Survival of the strongest, all that."

"Not the strongest," he said. "That's the modern interpretation, and it's wrong. The key for Darwin was not that the strongest survive the most adaptable do. See the difference?"

I nodded.

"So the smarter bad guys, they adapted. They moved their business out of Manhattan. They sold drugs, for example, in the less competitive burbs. For your basic corruption, they started feeding on the Jersey cities. Camden, for example. Three of the last five mayors have been convicted of crimes. Atlantic City, I mean, c'mon, you don't cross the street without graft. Newark and all that revitalization bullshit. Revitalization means money. Money means kickbacks and graft."

I shifted in my chair. "Is there a point to this, Pistillo?"

"Yeah, asshole, there's a big point." His face reddened. His features remained steady, though not without great effort. "My brother-in-law the father of those boys tried to clean the streets of these scumbags. He worked undercover. Someone found out. And he and his partner ended up dead."

"And you think my brother was involved in that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"You have proof?"

"Better than that." Pistillo smiled. "Your brother confessed."

I leaned back as if he'd taken a swing at me. I shook my head. Calm down. He would say and do anything, I reminded myself. Hadn't he been willing to frame me just last night?

"But we're getting ahead of ourselves, Will. And I don't want you to get the wrong idea. We don't think your brother killed anyone."

Another whiplash. "But you just said "

He held up a hand. "Hear me out, okay?"

Pistillo rose again. He needed time. I could see that. His face was surprisingly matter-of-fact, composed even, but that was because he was jamming the rage back in the closet. I wondered if that closet door would hold. I wondered how often, when he looked at his sister, that door gave way and the rage was let loose.

"Your brother worked for Philip McGuane. I assume you know who he is."

I was giving him nothing. "Go on."

"McGuane is more dangerous than your pal Asselta, mostly because he's smarter. The OCID considers him one of the top guns on the East Coast."

"OCID?"

"Organized Crime Investigation Division," he said. "At a young age, McGuane saw the writing on the wall. Talk about adapting, this guy is the ultimate survivor. I won't go into detail about the current state of organized crime the new Russians, the Triad, the Chinese, the old-world Italians. McGuane stayed two steps ahead of the competition. He was a boss by the time he was twenty-three. He works all the classics drugs, prostitution, loan-sharking but he specializes in graft and kickbacks and setting up his drug trade in less competitive spots away from the city."

I thought about what Tanya had said, about Sheila selling up at Haverton College.

"McGuane killed my brother-in-law and his partner, a guy named Curtis Angler. Your brother was involved. We arrested him but on lesser charges."

"When?"

"Six months before Julie Miller was murdered."

"How come I never heard anything about it?"

"Because Ken didn't tell you. And because we didn't want your brother. We wanted McGuane. So we flipped him."

"Flipped him?"

"We gave Ken immunity in exchange for his cooperation."

"You wanted him to testify against McGuane?"

"More than that. McGuane was careful. We didn't have enough to nail him on the murder indictment. We needed an informant. So we wired him up and sent him back in."

"You're saying that Ken worked undercover for you?"

Something flashed hard in Pistillo's eyes. "Don't glamorize it," he snapped. "Your low-life brother wasn't a law enforcement officer. He was just a scumbag trying to save his own skin."

I nodded, reminding myself yet again that this could all be a lie. "Go on," I said again.

He reached back and grabbed a cookie from the counter. He chewed slowly and washed it down with the iced tea. "We don't know what happened exactly. I can only give you our working theory."

"Okay."

"McGuane found out. You have to understand. McGuane is a brutal son of a bitch. Killing someone is always an option for him, you know, like deciding to take the Lincoln or Holland Tunnel. A matter of convenience, nothing more. He feels nothing."

I saw now where he was heading with this. "So if McGuane knew that Ken had become an informant "

"Dead meat," he finished for me. "Your brother understood the risk. We were keeping tabs, but one night he just ran off."

"Because McGuane found out?"

"That's what we think, yes. He ended up at your house. We don't know why. Our theory is that he thought it was a safe place to hide, mostly because McGuane would never suspect he'd put his family in danger."

"And then?"

"By now you must have guessed that Asselta was working for McGuane too."

"If you say so," I said.

He ignored that. "Asselta had a lot to lose here too. You mentioned Laura Emerson, the other sorority sister who was killed. Your brother told us that Asselta murdered her. She was strangled, which is Asselta's favorite method of execution. According to Ken, Laura Emerson had found out about the drug trade at Haverton and was set to report it."

I made a face. "And they killed her for that?"

"Yeah, they killed her for that. What do you think they'd do, buy her an ice cream? These are monsters, Will. Get that through your thick head."

I remembered Phil McGuane coming over and playing Risk. He always won. He was quiet and observant, the sort of kid who makes you wonder about still waters and all that. He was class president, I think. I was impressed by him. The Ghost had been openly psychotic. I could see him doing anything. But McGuane?

"Somehow they learned where your brother was hiding. Maybe the Ghost followed Julie home from college, we don't know. Either way, he catches up to your brother at the Miller house. Our theory is that he tried to kill them both. You said you saw someone that night. We believe you. We also believe that the man you saw was probably Asselta. His fingerprints were found at the scene. Ken was wounded in the assault that explains the blood but somehow he got away. The Ghost was left with the body of Julie Miller. So what would be the natural thing to do? Make it look like Ken did it. What better way to discredit him or even scare him away?"

He stopped and started nibbling on another cookie. He would not look at me. I knew that he could be lying, but his words had the ring of truth. I tried to calm myself, let what he was telling me sink in. I kept my eyes on him. He kept his gaze on the cookie. Now it was my turn to fight back the rage.

"So all this time" I stopped, swallowed, tried again "so all this time, you knew that Ken didn't kill Julie."

"No, not at all."

"But you just said "

"A theory, Will. It was just a theory. It's just as likely that he killed her."

"You don't believe that."

"Don't tell me what I believe."

"What could possibly be Ken's motive for killing Julie?"

"Your brother was a bad guy. Make no mistake about that."

"That's not a motive." I shook my head. "Why? If you knew Ken probably didn't kill her, why did you always insist he had?"

He chose not to reply. But maybe he didn't have to. The answer was suddenly obvious. I glanced at the snapshots on the refrigerator. They explained so much.

"Because you wanted Ken back at any cost," I said, answering my own question. "Ken was the only one who could give you McGuane. If he was hiding as a material witness, the world wouldn't really care. There would be no press coverage. There would be no major manhunt. But if Ken murdered a young woman in her family basement the story of suburbia gone wrong the media attention would be massive. And those headlines, you figured, would make it harder for him to hide."

He kept studying his hands.

"I'm right, aren't I?"

Pistillo slowly looked at me. "Your brother made a deal with us," he said coldly. "When he ran, he broke that deal."

"So that made it okay to lie?"

"It made it okay to track him down by any means necessary. "

I was actually shaking. "And his family be damned?"

"Don't put that on me."

"Do you know what you did to us?"

"You know something, Will? I don't give a damn. You think you suffered? Look in my sister's eyes. Look at her!"

"That doesn't make it right "

He slammed his hand on the table. "Don't tell me about right and wrong. My sister was an innocent victim."

"So was my mother."

"No!" He pounded the table, this time with his fist, and pointed a finger at me. "There's a big difference between them, so get it straight. Vic was a murdered cop. He didn't have a choice. He couldn't stop his family's suffering. Your brother, on the other hand, chose to run. That was his decision. If that somehow hurt your family, blame him."

"But you made him run," I said. "Someone was trying to kill him and you top that off by making him think he'll be arrested for murder. You forced his hand. You pushed him farther underground."

"That was his doing, not mine."

"You wanted to help your family, and in the process you sacrificed mine."

Pistillo snapped then, knocking the glass across the table. The iced tea splashed on me. The glass fell to the floor and shattered. He rose and looked down at me. "Don't you dare compare what your family went through with what my sister went through. Don't you dare."

I met his eye. Arguing with him would be useless and I still did not know if he was telling the truth or twisting it for his own purposes. Either way, I wanted to learn more. Antagonizing him would do me no good. There was more to this story. He was not done yet. There was still too much unanswered.

The door opened. Claudia Fisher leaned her head in to check on the commotion. Pistillo put up a hand to tell her it was fine. He settled back into his chair. Fisher waited a beat and then left us alone.

Pistillo was still breathing heavily.

"So what happened next?" I asked him.

He looked up. "You haven't guessed?"

"No."

"It was a stroke of luck actually. One of our agents was vacationing in Stockholm. A fluke thing."

"What are you talking about?"

"Our agent," he said. "He spotted your brother on the street."

I blinked. "Wait a second. When was this?"

Pistillo did a quick calculation in his head. "Four months ago."

I was still confused. "And Ken got away?"

"Hell no. The agent didn't take any chances. He tackled your brother right then and there."

Pistillo folded his hands and leaned toward me. "We caught him," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "We caught your brother and brought him back."