Win

Chapter 33

You found Arlo Sugarman.”

It has been twelve hours since Kabir’s phone call. My adrenaline spike has subsided, the crash thus imminent. I have not slept, and I can feel myself fraying at the edges. Stamina is a large part of my training, but genetically I am not predisposed to it. I am also aging, which obviously hampers stamina, and I have very little real-world experience in needing it. I have rarely had to stay up all night on patrol, as one might in the military, or been forced to go days on end with no sleep. I do battle — and then I rest.

The old woman speaking to me now is Vanessa Hogan.

I am back at her house in Kings Point. We are alone. Jessica set this up for me. At first, Vanessa Hogan was reluctant to consent to a second meeting. The enticement that pushed her over the edge, as I suspected it would, was that she and I would meet alone, only the two of us, and I would tell her the whereabouts of Arlo Sugarman.

“Could we start with you?” I ask her.

Vanessa Hogan is propped up via pillows on the same couch. Her skin tone is rosier than at our last meeting. She appears less frail. A scarf still covers her head. The house is empty. She’d sent her son Stuart to the grocery store.

“I really don’t know what you mean.”

“I recently visited Billy Rowan’s father,” I say. “Do you know he and Edie Parker’s mother are something of an item?”

“I did not,” Vanessa says, her voice dripping something overly sticky. “How nice for them.”

“Yes. William Rowan is in assisted living. His room is filled with Christian imagery. There are framed Bible quotes on the wall. I found the contrast striking.”

“What contrast?”

“With your home,” I say, lifting both hands in the air. “I don’t even see a single cross.”

She shrugs. “That’s show religion,” Vanessa replies with a tinge of bitterness. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Alone, you’re correct, it wouldn’t. But I have done some digging. You’ve never been associated with a church, as far as I can see. You’ve never given money to any religious institution. In fact, before Frederick was killed—”

“Murdered,” Vanessa Hogan interrupts, a sticky-sweet smile plastered to her face. “My son wasn’t killed. He was murdered.”

I try to mirror the smile. “We are getting to it now, Ms. Hogan, aren’t we?”

“What does that mean?”

“My best friend was robbed of a pro basketball career because a man named Burt Wesson intentionally injured him. Destroyed his knee. One day, I paid Burt a visit. He hasn’t been the same since. There are men who have crossed my path who have done great wrongs. Over the years, I’ve conducted ‘night tours.’ Some survived, some didn’t, but none were ever the same. Most recently, right before Ry Strauss’s body was found, I made sure a bullying abuser would never harm anyone else again.”

Vanessa Hogan studies my face. “Do you have your phone with you, Mr. Lockwood?”

“I do.”

“Take it out and hand it to me.”

I do as she asks. She looks at the screen.

“Do you mind if I power it off?”

I signal for her to suit herself.

Vanessa Hogan presses the button on the side and holds it. The phone goes dark. She leaves it on the coffee table. “What are you trying to say, Mr. Lockwood?”

“You know,” I say. “We both felt it that first meeting. All of our talk about vengeance.”

“I told you that vengeance should be the Lord’s.”

“But you didn’t mean it. You were testing me, gauging my reaction. I could see it in your face. The bullying abuser I injured last week? He was an active danger. Now he isn’t. Simple. He was neutralized by me because the law wouldn’t stop him.”

She nods. “You said you wanted to do the same to the men who killed your uncle.”

“Yes.”

“And killed the poor girls.”

I nod. “You understood,” I say. “You sympathized.”

“Of course.”

“Because you’ve done the same.”

I lean back. I put a hand into my pocket.

“Where is Arlo Sugarman?” she asks.

“I could just turn him in,” I say.

“You could, yes.”

“But you’d rather I not.”

The room falls silent. We are right on that edge now.

I say, “You know what happened to Lionel Underwood, don’t you?”

She doesn’t reply.

“It was too much for Leo Staunch. He didn’t want anyone else to endure what Lionel Underwood had. So he asked me to help him protect Arlo Sugarman. I found that odd.”

“As do I,” she says.

“No, not that he didn’t want to hurt Arlo — I got that.” I lean closer and lower my voice. “But why did Leo only ask about Arlo?”

“I’m not following.”

“Why,” I continue, “didn’t he ask me about Billy Rowan and Edie Parker?” I sit back. “It kept nagging at me, but the answer was obvious.”

“What’s that?”

“Leo Staunch didn’t ask about Billy and Edie,” I say, “because he knew they were already dead.”

Silence again fills the room, pushes out, suffocates.

“It is funny how so many of the early theories ended up being the correct ones,” I say. “Take the Jane Street Six. After Lake Davies turned herself in, there were only five. How, everyone wondered, could the remaining members have managed to stay hidden all these years? One person? Okay. Two? Unlikely, but perhaps. But all five of them alive and unseen for all these years? Now we know the answer, don’t we? Lionel Underwood has been dead for more than forty years. Nero Staunch took care of that. And Billy and Edie have been dead even longer. You saw to that, Ms. Hogan.”

Vanessa doesn’t reply. She just sits there with the sickly-sweet smile.

“You are eighty-three years old,” I say. “You are ill. You want to tell someone the truth, and you see me as a kindred spirit. You have my phone — I would have no proof anyway. Do you fear I will report what you say to the FBI?”

Vanessa Hogan’s eyes lock hard on mine. “I don’t fear anything, Mr. Lockwood.”

Of this I have no doubt.

“They stole my life.” Her voice is a pained and harsh whisper. She takes in a deep breath. I watch her chest rise and fall, taking in oxygen, gaining strength. “My only son, my Frederick... When I first heard he was dead, it felt like somebody had whacked me with a baseball bat. I dropped to the floor. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. My life ended. Just like that. All that love I had for that boy, the precious beautiful boy, it didn’t die. It turned to rage. Right there.” She shakes her head, her eyes dry. “Without that rage, I don’t think I would have ever stood up.”

There is a water bottle next to her with a straw. She lifts it to her lips, and her eyes close.

“I became consumed with justice. You, Mr. Lockwood, you worry about stopping bad people before they commit more crimes. What you do is admirable and even practical — you stop crimes. You prevent more people from having to go through the horror of what happened to Frederick and me. But that wasn’t my motivation. I didn’t think or even care if the Jane Street Six did it again. I had that rage. I had that rage — and I had to put it somewhere.”

“Tell me what you did next,” I say.

“Research,” she replies. “Do you research your enemies, Mr. Lockwood?”

“I do.”

“I learned that three of the six came from religious families — Billy Rowan, Lake Davies, and Lionel Underwood. I also figured that they were scared, trying to find a way to come in from the cold. So I made that pitiful religious appeal on television. And I prayed — no joke — that one of them would call me.”

“And one did call you,” I say.

“Billy Rowan. That part was true, just like I told everyone. He came in the kitchen door.”

“What happened next?”

“That baseball bat. A literal one rather than figurative. I hid it next to the refrigerator. Billy was sitting at my kitchen table. I asked if he wanted a Coke. He said yes, please. So polite. Hands folded in his lap. Crying. Telling me how sorry he was. But I had planned this. He had his back to me. I took the bat and whacked him in the skull. Billy’s whole body shuddered. I hit him again. He teetered on the chair and then fell to the linoleum. I hit him again and again. That rage. That burning rage. It was finally being fed — you’ve felt that?”

I nod.

“Billy was on the floor. Bleeding. Eyes closed. I raised the bat over my head again. Like an axe. It felt so good, Mr. Lockwood. You know. Beforehand I’d worry that the actual act would make me queasy. But my God, it was the opposite. I was enjoying myself. I was idly wondering how many more blows it would take to kill him when I suddenly had a better idea.”

“That being?”

Vanessa Hogan smiles again. “Find out what he knows.”

“Makes sense,” I agree.

“I called Nero Staunch. We had met in Lower Manhattan at a meeting for the victims’ families. I asked him to come alone. The two of us dragged Billy down into my basement. We tied him to a table, then we woke him. Nero used a power drill with a narrow bit. He started on Billy’s toes. Then he moved to his ankles. At first, Billy claimed he didn’t know where the others were — they had all split up. Nero didn’t buy it. It took some time. Billy loved Edie Parker. Did you know they were engaged?”

“I did, yes.”

“So Billy tried to hang on, which only made it worse. Inevitably, the truth came out. He didn’t know about the others, but he and Edie were hiding together. They planned on turning themselves in. And you’re correct, Mr. Lockwood — those two didn’t throw cocktails that night. They’d planned to, he admitted, but when the bus went over the railing, they all just ran. Billy and Edie’s hope was that if they surrendered early, they’d be spared the worst of it, especially if one of the parents was willing to forgive them.”

Vanessa Hogan ups the sickly-sweet smile.

“That parent,” I say, “being you, of course.”

“Of course. To be on the safe side, Billy had come alone to feel out the situation, leaving Edie hiding alone at a lake cabin owned by an English professor at SUNY in Binghamton. Nero and I drove up with Billy in the trunk. We found Edie Parker. We made sure she didn’t know anything more — which enraged me. I wanted to find them all, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen quite yet. Then we finished with Edie and Billy.”

“What did you do with the bodies?” I ask.

“Why would you want to know?”

“Idle curiosity, I guess.”

Vanessa Hogan’s eyes are on mine now, probing. A few seconds later, she waves her hand and says, “Oh, why not?” in a too-cheerful tone. “Nero had an alliance with a mob boss named Richie B who lived in Livingston. Richie B had a furnace on the back of this huge estate. We brought the bodies there. That was the end of that.”

Her story is pretty much what I had expected, and she relishes the telling of it.

“So two are dead almost immediately,” I say. “A few years later, Lake Davies turns herself in. She goes to Nero Staunch and makes a deal for Lionel Underwood. Were you aware of that?”

Vanessa frowns. “Nero told me — but after the fact. I wasn’t happy about it.”

“You wanted to get both of them?”

“Of course. But Nero said it wasn’t as easy as you see on TV to kill her in prison. For one thing, Lake Davies was being held in a federal facility. That makes it harder, he said. But between you and me? I think Nero was just an old-world sexist. Killing men? No problem. But his stomach couldn’t handle Edie Parker. I took the lead in that.”

I nod slowly, trying to put it together as she speaks. “So that’s four of the six accounted for,” I say.

“Yes.”

“And then, what, you heard nothing?”

“For over forty years,” she says.

“And then someone — maybe a man named Randy — comes to Nero Staunch with information on Ry Strauss’s whereabouts,” I say. “Nero is too old and sick to do anything about it anymore. He’s in a wheelchair. His power is all ceremonial. His nephew Leo is the boss now, and Leo’s against this kind of vigilantism. So Nero calls you. I can show you three calls coming from the Staunch family craft brewery to your home. Landlines, which, if you don’t mind me saying, is old-school.”

“That’s not proof of anything.”

“Not in the slightest,” I agree. “But I don’t need proof. This isn’t a court of law. It’s just you and I having a chat. And I still need answers.”

“Why?”

“I told you.”

“Oh right.” Vanessa nods, remembering. “The Hut of Horrors. Your uncle and your cousin.”

“Yes.”

“So go on,” she says. “Tell me the rest of your theory.”

I hesitate — I want her to say it — but then I dive in. “I don’t know if the information came to you directly from Nero Staunch or if Staunch sent this Randy to you. That doesn’t really matter. You ended up getting the contents of Ry Strauss’s safe deposit box. That told you what name he was using, where he lived, perhaps a phone number. Ry was understandably panicked about the robbery. You called him and pretended to be someone from the bank. What did you tell him exactly?”

She narrows her eyes, tries to look wily. “What makes you so sure it was me?”

I open the file I’ve brought with me and pull out the first still from the CCTV camera in the basement. “We thought the perpetrator was a small, bald man. But once I realized that the killer could be a woman, one who perhaps lost her hair because of chemotherapy, well, that’s you, isn’t it?”

She says nothing.

I pull out the second still and hand it to her. On it, a man with jet-black hair and a brunette are exiting via the front door.

“This is the CCTV from the lobby of the Beresford. It was taken six hours after the one I just showed you from the basement. The man” — I point — “is a building resident named Seymour Rappaport. He lives on the sixteenth floor. The woman with him, however, is not his wife. No one knows who she is. Seymour didn’t know either. He said the woman was in the elevator when he got in, so she had to have come from a higher floor. We checked pretty thoroughly. There is no sign of this woman entering the building. You were very clever. You wore an overcoat on the way in via the basement. You dumped it in the middle of Ry’s apartment. No one would notice it unless they specifically looked. When you put on that wig, the bald man vanished for good. Then you took the elevator down and exited with another resident. Genius really.”

Vanessa Hogan just keeps smiling.

“You did make one small mistake though.”

That makes the smile falter. “What’s that?”

I point to the left shoe in one photograph, then the other.

“Same footwear.”

Vanessa Hogan squints at one image, then the next. “Looks like a white sneaker. Common enough.”

“True. Nothing that would hold up in a court.”

“And come now, Mr. Lockwood. Aren’t I too old to pull this off?”

“You’d think so,” I say, “but no. You had a gun. You kept it against his back. I could, of course, ask the FBI to pull all the nearby street camera footage from the day. I’m sure we would find the bald man holding a gun on him. We might even get a clearer shot of your face.”

Vanessa is loving this. “You don’t think I would have disguised my face too? Nothing much, just a little stage makeup?”

“More genius,” I say.

“I wonder though.”

“Wonder what?”

“I never realized the painting over his bed was so valuable.”

“And if you had?”

Vanessa Hogan shrugs. “I wonder if I would have taken it.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t, no.”

So there we are. I now know the fate of all six of the Jane Street Six. It occurs to me, as I sit there with Vanessa Hogan, that I am the only person in the world who does.

As if she could read my thoughts, Vanessa Hogan says, “Now it’s your turn, Mr. Lockwood. Where is Arlo Sugarman?”

I ponder how to answer this question. There is still one more thing I want to know. “You interrogated Billy Rowan and Edie Parker.”

“We went over that.”

“They told you that they didn’t throw Molotov cocktails.”

“Yes. So?”

“And what about Arlo Sugarman?”

“What about him?”

“What did they say about his role in all this?”

The smile is back. “I’m impressed, Mr. Lockwood.”

I say nothing.

“You think that makes Arlo guiltless?”

“What did Billy and Edie tell you?”

“Do you promise that you’ll still tell me where Arlo Sugarman is?”

“I do, yes.”

Vanessa settles back. “You seem to know already, but okay, I’ll confirm it for you. Arlo wasn’t there — but he was still the one who planned it. The fact that he ended up being too gutless to show doesn’t make him any less guilty.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “One final question.”

“No,” Vanessa Hogan says, and I hear steel in her voice. “First, you tell me where Arlo Sugarman is.”

It is indeed time. So I just say it: “He’s dead.”

Her face drops.

I produce a photograph of the tombstone. I tell her what Calvin Sinclair had told me. It takes a while for Vanessa Hogan to accept all of this. I take my time. I explain all I know about Arlo Sugarman, how he spent time in Oklahoma and overseas, how he seemed to do good in his life and try to right whatever wrong he’d committed.

After some time, Vanessa Hogan says, “So it’s over. It’s really over.”

It was for her. It wasn’t for me.

“One more thing,” I say, as I rise to leave. “If Billy and Edie didn’t throw the explosives, did they say who did?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Ry Strauss, for one.”

“And for the other?”

“You’ve seen the grainy images,” she says. “There were still six people there. Ry Strauss got someone else to take Arlo Sugarman’s place. He threw the second one.”

“And his name?”

“Billy and Edie didn’t know him before that night,” she says. “But everyone called him Rich.” She sits up a little straighter. “Do you have any idea who that is?”

Rich, I say to myself.

Short, of course, for Aldrich.

“No,” I tell her. “No idea at all.”