Think Twice

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Myron hit full panic mode.

He called his father’s phone. No answer. He called his mother’s. No answer.

He debated calling the lobby of the Lock-Horne Building and telling security to follow the old woman, get a license plate, something, but how would that help his father? It wouldn’t. It might bring justice later, but for now that whole idea was something his brain didn’t even want to entertain.

So what should he do?

Call the Florida police? Call someone who worked at his parents’ retirement village?

It all felt so futile. Myron felt helpless and scared and vulnerable, and man oh man, he didn’t like that.

He sprinted into the waiting area. Big Cyndi wasn’t there. He could feel the panic in him rise to yet another level.

From behind him, Big Cyndi said, “Mr. Bolitar?”

“Where were you?”

“In the little girl’s room,” she said. “It was only a number one.”

He was about to tell her what happened when his phone buzzed.

The caller ID read MOM.

He hit the answer button with the speed of a gunslinger in an old Western. “Hello?”

“Guess what klutz broke his nose playing pickleball?”

Then he heard his father’s voice: “Oh stop it, Ellen, I’m fine.”

Relief flooded Myron’s veins.

“You were the one who insisted I call him right away, Al.”

“I didn’t want him to worry.”

“How would he worry? He didn’t even know you were hurt.”

“Mom,” Myron said, fighting to keep his tone even, “just tell me what happened.”

“Cousin Norman, that’s Moira’s boy. You remember Cousin Norman, right? We went to see him in Where’s Charley? when he was in seventh grade?”

“Mom.”

“Anyway, Cousin Norman is driving us to urgi-care, but your father is fine. Seriously, Myron, who breaks their nose playing pickleball? You know that new carpet in our living room? The one we bought at... Al, what was the name of that place?”

“I don’t know. Who cares?”

“I care. It was that home store off Central Avenue. Myron, you know the one. It’s next to that diner you took us to lunch at last time in February.”

“Ellen.”

“It begins with a D. Demarco Home and Carpeting? Deangelo? Anyway, that carpet. It’s covered in blood now. Like our living room is that shower scene in Psycho. Who comes back home when they’re still bleeding and, what, takes a nap on the floor?”

“I didn’t know I was still bleeding,” his father said.

“How could you not know? Anyway, he’s playing pickleball. Then someone — your father won’t tell me who—”

“Because it doesn’t matter!”

“—smashed the ball at your father. Your father, being a regular Jim Thorpe, used his nose instead of a paddle.”

Myron said, “Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to catch the next flight down.”

“No, you’re not.”

That was his father.

“I’m fine,” Dad said. “You have work. You’re busy.”

“Oh, right,” Mom said. “We read about Greg Downing getting arrested. Did he really kill that pretty woman and her son?”

“Don’t ask him that, Ellen. You’re a lawyer. You should know better.”

“What, I can’t ask him mother-to-son?”

“Myron,” Dad said, “don’t come down.”

The voice left no room for argument. Myron got it. Dad didn’t want Mom to worry. If Myron flew down, Mom would know something was seriously wrong.

“Who were you playing with, Dad?”

Mom took that one. “He was playing with his new friend Allen. You remember him, Myron? He’s that big fan of yours.”

“I remember.”

“He’s gone,” Dad said.

“Oh, Myron?” Mom again. “We just pulled into the urgi-care. I’ll call you later.”

When Mom hung up, Myron realized that his entire body was shaking. He called Win and filled him in on what happened.

“They just suddenly backed off,” Myron said at the end. “I don’t get it.”

“I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me get people on your parents. I’ll be back at the office in fifteen minutes.”

“I thought you were flying down to Philadelphia.”

“I canceled.”

“Why?”

“Fifteen minutes, Myron.”

Win hung up. Myron took his phone and stared at it for a moment as though he were expecting it to ring again.

What now?

He called Terese. She answered on the third ring. “Hey, handsome.”

“Hey.”

“What’s going on?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” he said.

“Shit, what happened?”

He didn’t reply for a second.

“That bad?”

“Tell me about the story you’re working on.”

“I would say, ‘You first,’ but it seems you need a second.”

Myron couldn’t help but smile. “I love you, you know.”

“I do, yes. Ronald Prine was murdered by a contractor he ripped off. Her name is Jacqueline Newton. Tons of evidence. She swears she’s totally innocent. The only hiccup for the police is that her sick father is confessing.”

“Trying to take the fall for her?”

“Yes,” Terese said.

“Any chance he really did it?”

“I don’t think so, no.” Then Terese added, “We done stalling?”

“They went after my parents.”

He spilled it all — about the meeting with PT, his theory that a serial killer may have set up Greg, the walk back, the attack on his father, all of it.

When he finished, Terese asked, “Do you want me to come back up?”

Yes. “No,” he said.

“I can get someone else to cover this murder case.”

“Don’t come up. I’m okay.”

“Hmm,” she said.

“What?”

Myron’s phone buzzed, telling him another call was coming.

“Terese, it’s my father.”

“Go.”

He switched over. “Dad?”

“I’m fine. I’m waiting for the doctor to see me, but it’s a broken nose, that’s all. I’ll be fine. Look, I’m not keeping things from you, but I’m not telling you everything either.”

“About?”

“About your mother.”

“What about her?”

“She’s okay most days. And she’s at her best when she’s on the phone with her children. She has anxiety. She’s scared a lot, Myron. I don’t want her scared, okay?”

Myron swallowed. “Okay, Dad.”

“We keep this between us for now, understood?”

“Understood.”

“And don’t come down, Myron. Your mother reads you like a book. Always has. It’s why you never got away with anything when you were a kid. I assume this all involves something you and Win are working on?”

“Yes.”

“So protect your mother and get on with it. Don’t get distracted.”

“Already taken care of,” Myron said. “What happened after they hung up?”

“Allen that rat bastard — by the way, I’ve been in fights. I grew up in a tough neighborhood. I had the factory in Newark. Anyway, I saw the gun coming. I turned my head and rolled with it. So really it’s not so bad, okay? Trust me on that. It’s just the nose. I didn’t get dizzy or anything.”

“Okay, thanks for telling me that.”

“So anyway, after Allen hung up, he just held the gun on me. He was waiting for something to happen.”

The same thing as the old woman who called herself Ellen.

“Any idea what they were waiting on?”

“Someone called him on the phone. Allen mumbled something about letting him know if they find him and then he said something about a shanty.”

Myron felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “A shanty?”

“Yeah, I didn’t get it either.”

But Myron did get it. Shanty. The bar where Bo/Brian/Stevie worked in Montana. Myron nodded to himself, seeing it now. Turant’s people knew that Myron had flown to Montana. They’d sent men there, started canvassing where Myron had gone, maybe asked around, maybe there had been a tracker on Myron’s rental car, whatever. They’d somehow found out where Bo was at the same time as they were threatening Myron’s dad. So they held up, kept the gun on Dad, waited until...

Joey’s people must have found Bo.

“Doc, I’m talking to my son. Okay, I’ll hang up now. Myron, I’ll call you later. Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

Click.

Myron quickly googled the Shanty Lounge in Havre, Montana. He hit the link and heard the phone ring. Three rings later, someone picked up and said, “Who is this?”

“I’m looking for your bartender Stevie.”

“And I asked, who is this?”

Myron didn’t reply right away.

“We see your phone number on the caller ID. Why is someone with a New Jersey number calling?”

The voice was a deep, rich baritone.

Like Cal the Cowboy’s.

“You’re Cal, right? My name is Myron Bolitar. I was there the other night.”

“You promised we’d be safe.”

Myron’s grip on the phone tightened.

“He even asked you,” Cal continued.

“Am I really safe staying here? Cal and I, we can move on if not.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

Myron swallowed. “What happened?”

“You sold us out, that’s what happened.”

“Cal, where is Bo?”

“They took him, you son of a bitch. They came in here with guns and took him away.”

When Win arrived, they moved into Myron’s office. Myron closed the door.

“Turant’s people got Bo,” Myron said.

“I have people watching your parents as a precaution,” Win said. “But now that they have Bo, your parents should be safe.”

“What do we do about Bo?”

“Nothing. He isn’t our issue.”

“We revealed where he was.”

“That doesn’t make him our responsibility. For that matter, Greg isn’t our responsibility either. If we have a task in all this — and I’m not sure we do — it is to help PT apprehend a serial killer.”

“So we just, what, wash our hands of it?”

“In terms of Bo? Yes.”

“We don’t even contact the authorities?”

“He has family. He has loved ones and friends. They will call the authorities if they believe he’s in danger. We need to think this all the way through for a moment. An hour ago, PT informed us that there may be a serial killer out there.”

“Okay.”

“He also informed us that this particular serial killer has covered his tracks by implicating someone else — a scapegoat, if you will — as the killer. The only connective tissue they’ve found so far...” He waited.

“Is Greg Downing,” Myron finished for him.

“Precisely. He connects the Callisters and Jordan Kravat,” Win continued. “Ergo, if Kravat was a victim of the same killer as the Callisters, who is the innocent man serving time for that murder?”

“Joey the Toe.”

“And who was the witness who helped put Joey away?”

“Are you saying Bo Storm lied on the stand?”

“Bo lied to you. He lied about Greg having cancer. He lied about Greg dying.”

“And the other evidence found at Jordan Kravat’s murder scene,” Myron said. “The DNA or whatever. That fits into this serial killer’s MO.”

“In light of this, the official explanation of the murder makes little sense. Joseph Turant, the gaffer — if you will allow me my Britishism — of a major crime family, has avoided arrest for decades by being careful. Does it seem logical that he would suddenly become stupid enough to murder this stripper-slash-sex-worker or his pimp — let’s call them what they are; if they were women victims, that’s how people would label them — and leave behind a witness like Bo Storm and so many clues?”

“It does not,” Myron agreed.

“One more thing: Joey the Toe went after us hard. Really hard. He has been searching high and low for Bo Storm for five years. If someone testified truthfully about him, even if it put Joey behind bars, do we really think he would go to these lengths just for revenge?”

“He might, but it does seem a lot. Hiring those killers to threaten my parents. Sending his soldiers to Montana. Scouring the area. I don’t even know how the Turants found Bo.”

“They didn’t find him,” Win said.

“What do you mean?”

“Joey’s people didn’t find Bo Storm. I told them where he was.”

Myron just stood there.

“It was the only way,” Win said.

“You gave him up?”

“We aren’t bulletproof.”

“I know that.”

“We killed Turant’s men.”

“To rescue me.”

“And you think he understands that distinction?” Win asked. “I made a deal with Turant when we were in Vegas. Safe passage in exchange for information. Once I saw they had your father—”

“You were on that call too?”

Win nodded. “They would have killed him. They would have killed your mother. They would have gone after us too. In simple terms, Bo Storm isn’t worth that. So yes, I gave him up.”

“That’s why they stopped hurting my father,” Myron said.

“Yes.”

“And, what, they stayed with him and checked out the Shanty to make sure you were telling the truth.”

“Yes.” Win rubbed his face with his hand, a gesture Myron had never seen him make before. “I messed up,” he said. Also words Myron didn’t think he’d ever heard Win utter. “I should have realized that they might track my plane. I miscalculated Turant’s desperation until I saw the gun on your father.”

“And giving up Bo was your only option?”

Win put his hands on Myron’s shoulders. “We are good, Myron — but no one is that good. I had no choice. It’s over now.”

“And what about Bo Storm?”

“A casualty of war.”

“I don’t know if I’m good with that.”

“Doesn’t matter if you are or not. You understand the stakes. If it makes you feel any better, killing Bo won’t help Turant. He needs Bo to tell the truth without appearing coerced.”

“It doesn’t make me feel better.”

“I didn’t think it would.”

“You’re okay with all this?”

“This isn’t about my personal comfort. I made the choice. I don’t think it was a difficult one.”

“Suppose Bo was telling the truth. Suppose Bo did see Joey the Toe murder Jordan Kravat that night.”

Win smiled. “You do love your moral dilemmas.”

“I want to know if it bothers you at all. I want to know if you still sleep well at night.”

“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Win said. Then he added: “And I never sleep well at night.”

Myron shook his head. “You’re something.”

“I don’t care about Bo Storm. I care about your parents. We all feel that way. Strangers don’t matter to us except in a theoretical way. We just pay the notion lip service.”

“You made the decision, so I didn’t have to.”

“This was an easy call for me. I would sacrifice a hundred Bo Storms to save your parents. And while you don’t want to admit it, so would you.”

It was an uncomfortable truth. “Dangerous way to think,” Myron said.

“Then you probably don’t want to know how many lives I would sacrifice to save you,” Win said. “Or maybe you would.”