Gun Machine

Thirty-One

“HELP ME,” Emily Westover said.

“What is it?” said Tallow, rising from the table, putting out a palm against the questioning looks he was getting.

“Jason’s downstairs. Said he had to talk to one of the employees. He said he’s going out tonight but he’s not walking the dog.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“He goes out at ten forty-five every night with the dog, walks her around Central Park a bit. Every night. Tonight he says he’s got to go out at ten forty-five but he can’t take the dog.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about, Mrs. Westover.”

“He’s been taking calls from his two friends. I know what this is about.”

“Which friends?”

“I shouldn’t tell you.”

“Mrs. Westover, with all respect, you shouldn’t be on the phone to me either. Now, you just asked for my help. I can’t help you without knowing everything that’s going on.”

“You think I’m crazy.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, you should.” She laughed. Giggled, in fact. The sound made Tallow go cold, for some reason. “I am crazy. But not so crazy that I don’t know I’m crazy, and I think that’s an important distinction. Andy Machen and that creepy bastard Al Turkel. He’s been talking to them. Something serious is happening tonight. Jason told me that I know what it’s about. Which means it’s about what, what, what he did to get where he is. What they did. Do you understand?”

Tallow had walked into the other room. He caught his reflection in a small mirror on the wall and judged himself before speaking.

“Mrs. Westover, what are you afraid of at Werpoes?”

“Him. He lives there.”

“Werpoes is buried and built on, and no one’s hiding in that square.”

“Jason told me to stay away from there.”

Given that the cache on Pearl Street had seemed to catch everyone by surprise, did it make sense for them to believe that CTS lived elsewhere? No. They paid for the Pearl Street apartment, and Westover himself was at least an accessory to providing a security door for the place. But then, CTS could not possibly have lived at the Pearl Street address, and he was unlikely to be sleeping outdoors all the time.

Tallow had missed something. His man CTS had to have more than one hideout. Possibly even several. Had anything gone wrong over the past two decades of his work, he would have needed other places to shelter. Perhaps places that his employers didn’t know about. This would make sense if he expected that one day, one of them would get caught, or get sloppy. Or, perhaps, get an attack of guilt and talk to his wife.

“Mr. Westover told you to stay away from there because he lived in the area.”

“He lives there. Jason doesn’t know exactly where, but…Werpoes. He’s there.”

“Tell me how I can help you, Mrs. Westover.”

“Save Jason. Please.”

Tallow’s words dried up in his throat.

“Please. You saved me. Save Jason. This is all too much for him. Save him. He’s raised this thing, this awful fucking manitou from the dirt of Old Manhattan, and it’s going to kill him. Please, John.”

Tallow’s mind was surging down parallel tracks. He looked for a notepad and pen. The apartment didn’t have a landline phone, so there was no table with scratch paper.

“I’m not sure how to do that, Mrs. Westover.”

He ducked into the kitchen and furiously mimed writing. Talia pulled open a kitchen drawer and produced a notebook and pencil.

“I don’t know. Talk to him. Promise him safety. Reason with him. Something. He wants out, I can see it in him.”

Talia put the pad and pencil on the kitchen table. Tallow wrote as clearly and swiftly as he could, and spun the pad to face Bat and Scarly. They nodded, visibly shifting into professional mode. Bat pulled out a smartphone, thumbed it to mute, and began typing as Scarly quietly got up and left the room.

“I can get there tonight,” Tallow said, “but not right now. Just sit tight. I promise I’ll be there. Don’t say anything to him. It would be best if he had no warning. Okay?”

“You’ll save him.”

“I promise you that I’ll do everything in my power to save him.”

“Thank you,” she said, grinding out the words, audibly wrestling with a sudden appalling need to burst into tears.

Tallow killed the call.

Scarly was already at a laptop in the other room.

“That was the wife of one of the people we believe to have hired our killer,” said Tallow to Talia, loud enough for everyone to hear him clearly. “She wants me to induce her husband to confess his involvement and save himself from the fallout. She also believes that Westover, Machen, and Turkel are meeting the killer tonight, in Central Park.”

“Great,” said Talia. “Send in the cavalry. Surround them and catch them in the act.”

“Even if we knew which part of Central Park, which is a big-ass place and lousy to operate in at night, and even if we could summon the manpower, which is doubtful—my captain doesn’t have the juice, my lieutenant doesn’t believe me, and I don’t have any friends—I don’t think that’d work.”

Tallow explained to them why he thought Emily Westover had been told to stay away from Werpoes.

“Christ,” said Talia, finally. “So what do you do?”

Tallow sat down with a heavy sigh, and waited a full thirty seconds before responding.

“I am kind of disturbed to report that I haven’t felt this good in years, and that I know exactly what we’re going to do. I just don’t know if it’s going to work. And I don’t know if I haven’t gone crazy too. The worst kind of crazy, where I don’t know I’m crazy. I hear it’s an important distinction.”

“You’re crazy,” said Bat, not looking up from his phone.

“Thanks, Bat.”

“Do we have to leave soon?” said Bat. “Because I’m going to need to use the bathroom, because death bag.”

“No,” said Tallow. “I want to get all this sorted out first. You need to find what I’m looking for, and you also need to get some gear out of the trunk of Scarly’s car. That’s where I’m guessing you keep it.”

“He keeps all his shit in the back of my car,” said Scarly from the other room. “There’s a pair of his underpants fused to my spare tire.”

“Good. Also, check your weapons.”

This time, Bat looked up at him. Tallow ignored the look. He was running through every eventuality he could conjure up for the next few hours of the future. The one thing he wasn’t planning for, he told himself with a small icy smile, was tomorrow morning.