Saint/Sinner

Chapter 19

Walter stared, mouth slightly agape, as Apollo clamped down on the tall man’s right arm — the same one that had been holding the Uzi — and began jerking his head left and right as if the appendage were his own personal chew toy. The man screamed and thrashed, trying in vain to push the dog off. He had let go of the submachine gun, probably because holding onto it wasn’t important anymore with a full set of sharp teeth rending at his flesh. She wanted to say the sight of Apollo working on the man was terrifying, but the truth was, after the long night she’d had, Allie couldn’t muster the energy to give a shit.

Walter was another matter. He might have gasped “Oh Jesus” just before he doubled over and threw up.

Allie stepped back. Somehow, the sight of Walter vomiting was almost reassuring, a sign that maybe the Walter she thought she knew wasn’t entirely a fabrication after all.

“Apollo!” she shouted.

The dog instantly let go of the man’s arm, but he didn’t go very far. He began circling his prey and baring his teeth, every single sharp fang covered in blood. The white fur under his chin was splashed with a new coat of fresh red, as were parts of his shoulders, neck, and forearms. He looked like a hunter wearing war paint, and the way he was growling at the tall man convinced her Apollo recognized the face of the person who had tried to shoot him not all that long ago.

“If I give him the word, he’ll finish you off, and neither one of us will lose any sleep over it,” Allie said to the man.

He may or may not have heard her as he struggled to his knees, cradling his right hand in his lap. There was an odd look on his face, almost as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened and that all this might have just been a bad dream. But all he had to do was look at Apollo, still circling him, to know he was very much awake.

“Go ahead,” Allie said when she saw the man’s eyes settle on his fallen Uzi less than four feet away.

The man sighed and sat back down on his butt. He shrugged off his suit jacket and began wrapping it around his bleeding arm, grimacing with every contact against the ghastly wound. He was clearly in tremendous pain and doing a poor job of hiding it. Maybe it was the adrenaline, she thought, allowing him to treat his wound without screaming out in agony.

“You have a name?” she asked him.

He gritted his teeth as he pulled the jacket tight, then said, “Monroe.”

“Where’s the other one, Monroe?”

“He left.”

“Let’s try this again,” she said, and fired at the ground barely an inch from his right leg.

He flinched and tried to pull the leg back, but Apollo, now behind him, growled even louder. Monroe froze.

“Now,” she said, “where’s the other one?”

“Back at the house with the girl,” Monroe said.

“Walter, is he lying?”

Walter shook his head and tried to turn to look back at her without moving too much, maybe for fear she would shoot him. She wasn’t sure if she could if he suddenly turned completely around, but fortunately he didn’t make her find out.

“He’s back there with Lucy,” Walter said.

“Doing what?” she asked.

“Waiting.”

“For?”

“Us to come back.”

“Who is ‘us,’ Walter?”

“You and me…”

“What about him?” she asked, nodding at Monroe, even though Walter couldn’t see the movement of her head because, of course, she was standing behind him.

“I guess him, too.”

“You guess?”

“Let me explain,” Walter started to say.

“Shut up,” she said. Allie reached into her back pocket and pulled out the two remaining plastic cuffs she’d taken off Jerry and tossed one into Monroe’s lap, then handed the other to Walter. “Put them on. Both of you.”

“Hands or feet?” Monroe asked, flashing her a barely credible grin that he wanted her to believe was all devil-may-care, but it just looked pathetic.

“Whichever one lets you walk, asshole,” she said.

“You’re no fun.”

“I’m not here to amuse you. Now put it on.”

Monroe picked up the cuffs and gingerly slipped them around his wrists, doing his best not to nudge his right arm. His face was contorted in obvious pain through the whole thing.

“Allie,” Walter said. Unlike Monroe, he hadn’t put his cuffs on. “Let me explain—”

“Put them on, Walter,” she said.

“Allie, please…”

“Put them on,” she said, spitting the words out through clenched teeth.

He sighed and did as instructed.

“Where is it?” she asked.

“Where is what?” he said.

“The gun. The one you shot Jack with.”

His entire body seemed to stiffen, and she had to wonder if he had convinced himself she hadn’t witnessed him murdering Jack back at the house. Or maybe he was hoping she wouldn’t bring it up.

“Behind my back,” he said quietly.

She reached under his jacket and felt around, found the gun, and relieved him of it. “Where’s your phone?”

“My phone?”

“Yes, Walter, your phone.”

“It’s back at the house. In the car. Reception was spotty, anyway,” he added. It was probably supposed to be a joke, but she didn’t laugh or even smile.

“Get up,” she said instead. “Both of you.”

Monroe struggled to his feet, grunting the entire time. His face had paled noticeably since Apollo got off him, and he was dripping blood from the gashed right arm despite the thick bundle of jacket wrapped tightly around it.

“Watch him, boy,” Allie said.

She didn’t have to tell him, because Apollo’s large brown eyes had never left Monroe, not even for a second.

“Hold up your hands,” she said as she walked around Walter. When he did, she pulled at the cuffs to make sure they were firmly in place. “Don’t move.”

“Allie,” he said, in that familiar pleading voice he always resorted to whenever he asked for forgiveness after an argument. There had been three occasions that she could recall, and he was the one who always apologized, even though two of those times had been her fault. Or partially her fault. Not that she ever let him know, even if she suspected that he knew but was just being the bigger man.

That Walter was worth fighting for. Maybe even worth dying for.

This Walter…she didn’t know this Walter at all.

“Allie, please,” he said, “just give me a chance to explain things. You’ll understand—”

“Shut up,” she said.

“Allie, please…”

“Start walking.”

“Allie…”

“Start walking,” she said, summoning every ounce of self-will not to punch him in the face right then and there.

“Allie,” Walter said as he walked in front of her. “Please listen to me. I did all of this for a reason. No one was supposed to get hurt. I swear to you, I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

“You did this,” she said. “All of this. Tonight. You.”

“Yes — no. I mean no. It wasn’t just me. Someone else was involved.”

“Who?”

“That doesn’t matter. It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. I swear, no one was supposed to get hurt.”

“How was it supposed to work, Walter?”

He didn’t answer right away, and even though she was behind him, she could glimpse his face from time to time and knew he was struggling, trying to pick the right words. Walter was always so easy to read.

No, that’s not true. I just thought he was, but he’s not. He’s never really been.

She kept at least five feet between her and Walter, with Monroe walking to their left. The mercenary’s head was slightly bent forward, and she caught him blinking every now and then. His face was paler than before, a clear indication he hadn’t dealt with his blood loss quite as well as he had wanted her to believe earlier. If his blazer weren’t black, she would have probably been able to see the blood that soaked through the material. She didn’t know how the man was even still on his feet, much less walking next to them.

She kept expecting Monroe to make a run for it, especially since Apollo had begun vanishing at random intervals. She first noticed it five minutes ago when the dog simply disappeared into thin air, only to reappear on the other side of Monroe a few minutes later. Then he was gone again when she wasn’t looking. She didn’t know where he went and was always a little concerned until he returned. She couldn’t decide if he was scouting the area around them for potential dangers or if he was just doing what dogs did and chasing the variety of animals inside the woods.

“The company’s dying,” Walter was saying in front of her. “No one knows except the higher-ups.”

“Like you.”

“Yes.” He paused before continuing. “There won’t be a Gorman and Smith in a year. We’ll be lucky to survive the next few months. Everyone who knows about it is already looking for a way out. Including Dan.”

“Dan never said anything to me.”

“No, he wouldn’t. Can’t let something like the dissolution of the company get out to the masses. Everyone would panic, especially about their retirement plans and 401Ks.”

“What about them?”

“That’s the question. No one knows what will happen to them. To anything connected to the company.”

“Is that what this is about, Walter? Your retirement plan? Money?”

“Of course it is, Allie. Money makes the world go ’round. Why do you get up and go to work every morning, or answer all of Dan’s calls even on the weekends? Money.”

“You were stealing from Gorman and Smith.”

“Yes…in a way.”

“How?”

“There are money accounts in the company system that…don’t belong there.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Gorman and Smith has a lot of clients, and not all of them are the type of people you’d want to have brunch with. Dangerous people.”

“Criminals.”

“Yes.”

She took a moment to process what Walter was telling her. Could it be? How was that even possible? Wouldn’t she have spotted the signs? Could she even believe anything he was saying now, especially after everything that had happened tonight?

“Are you telling me I’ve been working for a company that launders money for organized crime and never knew it?” she said. “I was there for seven months, Walter.”

“And they’ve been perfecting the façade for ten years before we showed up.”

“But you found out.”

“It took a few years, but I started noticing things. Strange money movements, accounts that didn’t seem to have real histories behind them. Very small details that most people wouldn’t see unless they spent too much time reading numbers…and had access.”

“Like you.”

He nodded. “Eventually, they came clean with me.”

“And you still kept working for them,” she said. It wasn’t a question, and he probably knew it by the way his shoulders stiffened slightly.

“You have to understand, Allie, they didn’t really give me a choice. It was join the team or put everyone I love at risk. You know Lucy means everything to me. Lucy and you—”

“Don’t.”

He sighed. Deeply, as if the world were crashing down on his shoulders.

Now you know how I feel, she thought.

“It’s the truth, Allie,” he said. “All of it.”

They walked in silence for the next few minutes, neither one saying anything. She spent the quiet time turning over everything she thought she knew about Gorman and Smith. About Dan, her boss. How had she missed the signs? Were there even signs to be missed? The idea of working blind all these months gnawed at the pit of her stomach. More than that, it pissed her off.

Walter, in front of her, sneaked a look back at her, maybe to gauge her reaction. “Allie…”

“The three that were waiting for us at the house,” she said. “Who were they?”

“Mercenaries.”

“Did Gorman and Smith send them? Did they find out what you were doing?”

“No.”

“Who were they, Walter?”

“I hired them.”

“Jesus, Walter…”

“It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.” His voice had sped up noticeably, as if he was afraid she might not let him finish. “Once Gorman and Smith found out what I had done, they weren’t just going to take my word for it that I was held at gunpoint and forced to move their clients’ money around into places where they can’t access it. So this was the only way.”

“You needed witnesses. Lucy and me.”

“Yes.”

“You needed us to be believable, which we would have been because we didn’t know any better. For all we knew, we would be telling the truth.” She paused, and because she didn’t know what else to say, “Jesus, Walter.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “They weren’t supposed to hurt anyone. They had very strict orders not to hurt anyone. If Apollo hadn’t attacked one of them…”

“They didn’t know you hired them.”

He shook his head.

“Because you had an accomplice,” she continued.

He nodded. “Someone else communicated with them throughout the week leading up to the job, then, if necessary, during it. They were supposed to threaten me using you and Lucy, and I would eventually buckle and do what they wanted — move a sizable amount of money out of Gorman and Smith and into dummy shell accounts that only I could access later.”

“Not all of it?”

“No. We needed to leave enough behind for the Feds to uncover. That was the other part of the plan. The U.S. government.”

“They know about Gorman and Smith. The real Gorman and Smith. That’s why you said the company only has a year at most before it goes under.”

“They’ve suspected for years, but they only started actively investigating recently. This — what happened to us out here — would be the excuse they’d need to get their hands on company records. Once that happened, Gorman and Smith would have other things to worry about than trying to pick apart my story. And before anyone knew what I’d done, we’d be gone. You, me, and Lucy. That was the original plan, anyway.” He sighed. “Things…got complicated.”

No shit, Walter, she thought, before looking over at Monroe. “What about him?”

Monroe wasn’t moving quite as easily next to them as before. He was clearly struggling with every step, his eyes permanently fixed on the ground. She still had to marvel that he was even moving at all. If he had heard a word of their conversation, he didn’t show it.

“He’s a company-hired gun,” Walter said. “It turns out I wasn’t being nearly as subtle as I thought leading up to tonight. They’d already suspected even before I started moving the money around and had been tracking me.”

“But you were working with him. Monroe.”

“Not at first, but I convinced him he could make more money by not turning me in.”

“You talked him into double-crossing Gorman and Smith?”

“It wasn’t that hard, Allie. Everyone wants a retirement package. Even hired killers like Monroe.” He paused for a moment; she could feel the sales pitch winding up, and he didn’t disappoint her. “Things didn’t work out like I planned. We won’t be able to talk our way out of this now, but we don’t have to. Forget about returning to the city. We could leave now and never look back. Ditch our old lives and start all over again.”

“Start over where, Walter?”

“Does it matter? It could be anywhere in the world, Allie, and we’d never have to work another day in our lives. You, me, and Lucy.”

“Lucy doesn’t know…”

“Of course not. But I thought about telling you. God, I almost told you so many times…”

“But you never did.”

“I didn’t think you’d go along with it.” There was something in his voice, almost accusing, when he added, “That was before tonight.”

He finally found the courage to stop and turn around, and his eyes sought her out. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t point the gun at him, and at the same time wasn’t afraid he would lunge at her. Maybe it was because she could see the old Walter in his eyes, but the new one Walter was also there, too, which was probably why she never took her finger off the trigger.

“I did this for us,” he said. “For our future. You have to believe me.”

“I do.”

“You do?” Surprise — maybe a little bit of shock — registered on his face. “You believe me?”

She nodded. “I believe you.”

“Allie, that’s great!” he said, and the confusion was replaced by a big old Walter-like smile.

“Except you don’t get it.”

The smile stuttered. “Get what? What are you talking about?”

“It’s not a matter of me not believing you, Walter.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s about me thinking you’re delusional.”

The smile vanished, replaced by the beginning of a frown. “I don’t understand…”

“The fact that you think we could just pretend tonight never happened, that we could just move on as one big, happy family. You’re out of your goddamned mind, Walter.”

His frown deepened and for a moment she thought he might start to cry, and she felt amazingly sorry for him. “I thought you understood.…”

“I do. And it doesn’t change a damned thing.”

“Allie.…”

“Turn around, Walter.”

“What?”

“Turn around. We’re going to walk back to the house, get Lucy, and we’re going to get into that car and drive away from here.” She tightened her grip on the gun. “Then I’m going to turn you in to the police and you’ll tell the Feds everything. About Gorman and Smith, about tonight, everything.”

“Allie…”

“Shut up and turn around and start walking.”

He sighed and was turning around when a loud bang! shattered her eardrums and something wet and clumpy hit her in the face.

Allie fell to her knees even as the gunshot echoed, and she managed to scrape enough of the material out of her eyes to see—

Walter on the ground on his stomach, his head turned sideways, his face toward her, frozen in that same frown she’d seen just a few seconds earlier. There was a hole in his forehead that hadn’t been there before.

A second bang! and Monroe collapsed to the ground beside her. He fell and lay still, staring up at the dark sky beyond the tree canopies. In an odd way, she thought he looked almost relieved.

Allie had forgotten when she had dropped the gun, but instead of looking for it, she could only focus on the sticky substance caking her face. She scraped at them with both hands, flicking blood and something thick (Don’t think about it) clinging to her skin, as boots appeared out of the bushes and from behind trees.

Men in black clothing surrounded her. They were carrying rifles, moonlight flickering off the long, polished barrels. She recognized the sleek frame of their weapons — AK-47s. Assault rifles. They all wore gun belts, all except for one. The man had on dress slacks and a white dress shirt with a sleek blood-red tie. He emerged from between two massive trees and stepped over Walter’s prone body toward her.

He crouched in front of her, took out a silk handkerchief, and held it out. She spied a pair of initials in the corner: D.W.

“Long night, huh?” the man said.

She grabbed at the proffered fabric and wiped at the pieces of Walter still clinging to her face. There was so much of it that she couldn’t reconcile how it had all come from that small hole in his forehead, but then she remembered she was looking at the entry hole, not the exit…

“Was that you that fired that shot earlier?” the man asked. “That’s how we knew where you were, you know. Then there was all that chatter. Walter, begging, as he’s wont to do.” The man glanced over at Monroe’s body. “I told them one-shot, one-kill, and look. Talk about professionals.” He fixed his eyes back on her. “You look like shit, Allie.”

She focused on the man’s face and couldn’t remember the last time she had personally seen him outside of Gorman and Smith. All of her interactions with Daniel “Dan” Wasterman, her boss, were always at the office.

“It’s definitely been a long and violent night, that’s for sure,” Dan said, standing up. “But it’s almost over. Just a few more hours to tie up all the loose ends; then we can all go back to our regularly scheduled lives. Well, for some of us, anyway…”