A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) (32 page)

I needed help taking the edge off the memories and the pills helped with that, too. I'd been filled in by the combined stories of the cops on the scene, Julie, and Amanda. A neighbor had seen us skulking around the Lane house with our guns out and called the MPDC. But Kransky had died before the ambulance had gotten there, his blood pumped out in a pool around his body. I wasn't sure how Amanda was holding herself together. It was too early to tell what the experience might mean for her tomorrow, or the next day, or the rest of her life. And, of course, I wasn't in great shape myself. There was nothing I wanted more than to go home and start the healing process, to apologize to Amanda, to pick things up with Julie, to find my equilibrium. But there were loose ends to deal with that could still wind up killing all of us if I didn't take care of them now.

The driver let me know when we were nearing our target and he slowed down long enough for me to grunt yes or no as we passed more imposing gates and red-brick driveways. On the fourth look, a drive fitting the description I'd been given came into view. I told him to pull in. He pressed the button at the gate. The little box buzzed, then the black iron fence rolled away and we drove up the long asphalt driveway.

The drive threaded through a front lawn that the Redskins could've used as a practice field. With room for the Cowboys to do their drills on the other side. The mansion at the end of the drive had three floors if you didn't count a turret that jutted up above the roof. I could make out three more buildings in the back that constituted the rest of the compound. Stables or garages or shooting ranges, I supposed. The front door was an oak and iron monstrosity that could've been stolen from a Moorish castle and was large enough to drive the taxi through.

As we neared the house, two guys in suits came out and took up positions near the door. They had wide, blocky bodies and watched us as we drove up. As we got closer, I could see the suits, though tailored with impeccable care, were too big even for these gorillas. Meaning they had more than pop guns under there. I told the taxi driver to pull up by the door and wait for me. I slid over and got out, then leaned back in, trying not to bump the shoulder cast.

"I, uh, wouldn't get out of the car, if I were you," I said, with what I hoped was an apologetic tone. "Just sit tight."

I approached the door, looking from one guy to the next.

"Mr. Singer?" the one on the left said.

"In the flesh. More or less."

"This way, please," the human block said, gesturing towards the entrance.

Half of the towering front door opened and the guards escorted me into the foyer. We stopped and they motioned for me to put my one good arm up. They did a thorough job frisking me, then ran a wand over and around my body. It went off with a discreet beep when it neared my shoulder.

"It's the prop," I said, gesturing to my shoulder.

"Take it off," the one with the wand said.

I gave him a look. "That and a couple of titanium bolts are all that's holding my shoulder together right now. I couldn't take it off if I wanted to."

The two glanced at each other.

"Look, I'm not here to shoot your boss and he knows that. Call him and ask. Or I get back in my taxi and we'll reschedule. Except you get to tell him that."

A minute later, we crossed the wood-paneled foyer, through a salon that would've made the Sun King proud, and into a drawing room featuring overstuffed furniture and trays with decanters and brandy snifters. On the far wall was a small door, carved with intricate scrollwork featuring a tangle of flowers and vines. The guard knocked once, opened without waiting for an answer, and gestured me through. He held it open, watching as I sidled past, then closed it behind me.

Beyond was an office that was decorated in the spirit of the rest of the house. In other words, like a medieval hall--or a madman's vision of one. There were heavy oak chairs that could pass for thrones. Tapestries of hunting scenes hung on the wall, the hounds and the bleeding deer locked together forever. A leather and wood globe, badly out of date two hundred years ago, sat on a pedestal in one corner. On the far wall, a fancy arrangement of shields and crossed swords hung above a large fireplace, in which burned a log the size of my torso.

But the cheery fire and faux Old World furnishings couldn't mask the smells that reached me from the far side of the room. There was the sharp, sterile tang of disinfectant and the musty odor of bodily fluid, covered up but never totally removed. And the underlying stink of death, which really has no description, but you know it when you smell it.

Sitting in a reclining chair lined with sheets was a small, stick-like man. He was ancient, the skin of his bald head discolored in patches. The few wispy hairs remaining to him were long and white. He was staring into the fire and plucking at the lapels of a flannel robe. In the back of the hand not doing the plucking was a needle with a line running to an IV stand. Next to him was a man dressed in scrubs, fiddling with the valve on one of the lines. Their heads turned as I came in and stopped. The old man, irritated, waved at me to come closer. I crossed the parquet, my footsteps sounding like measured knocks on a door. The nurse dragged over one of the ridiculous wooden chairs for me, then retreated to a corner, out of earshot but not out of the room.

The old man and I examined each other. Close up, he looked and smelled worse than he had from the door. His blue eyes were rheumy and unfocused. His face, which I remembered as being full and florid, sagged in gray folds now. The hand with the IV was heavily veined and I could see small white scars where numerous other needles had been inserted. He seemed to be enveloped by the chair, as if he were fading away into it and it would only be a matter of time before there would just be an empty robe lying there. With a shock, I remembered he was only ten years older than I was. I met his gaze and wondered what he saw from his point of view.

"So," he said. His voice was barely more than a whisper. "Marty Singer."

I said nothing.

"You've caused me a lot of pain," he said.

"Then we're even, " I said.

"Really?" he asked. His hand pinched the lapels of his robe, then patted them down. The other hand gripped the arm of the chair, but I could see the tremor. "What the hell do you want?"

"I need to know what's going to happen next."

"I bet you would, Singer. You always wanted answers, but you didn't always ask so nicely."

"I've mellowed."

"Old age?" he said. "And cancer. That'll do it to you. Not the best way to have your clock punched, bleeding out your ass. Then again, there are worse ways to go. Take brain cancer, for instance. You forget things, you start talking funny, you can't move your arms. Then there are the headaches, the fucking headaches that make you want to kill yourself. Danny, over there, had to take my gun away, make sure I didn't self-medicate."

I shifted in the seat. "You want me to feel sorry for you?"

"Now, see, the old Jim Ferrin would've been in
your
face for that," he said. "But, you know what? I don't care. I really don't care at all."

We sat like that for a minute. He looked off into space.

"You shot him," he said suddenly, breaking out of his trance. "You shot my son. I told you I'd kill you for that."

"He didn't give me much choice," I said. "And someone's got to pay for Kransky."

"He's paid," he said. "When you gut-shot Lawrence--besides blowing that hole in him--you nicked his intestine and we all know that's bad news. It won't be long now. He might even go before me. The doctor did what he could, but the wound's septic."

"He's in the hospital?"

"No, he's in the east wing. My doctor swung by this morning, told me I had a few weeks to live, gave the kid a morphine drip."

I sat, looking at him.

"It's not worth lying about, Singer," he said. "Lawrence is dead, I'm dead, you're dead."

"What were you going to do with him? If Taylor and Jackson hadn't screwed up?"

"Do I have to spell it out?" Ferrin asked, leaning forward. His voice gathered strength, becoming clipped and vicious. "I was going to put him away. Forever. Lawrence is a psychopath. Normally, that wouldn't put him out of place on the force or anywhere else in this city, for that matter, but Lawrence liked to…possess people. Girls. Lock them up. Do things to them. That girl in Indiana that he took the ten year rap for. She wasn't his first, just the first one they found. I tried looking the other way, but it was going to catch up with him and, eventually, with me. I couldn't get that through to Lawrence. He was mentally incapable of understanding. Or caring."

As he spoke, Ferrin's face tightened like the head of a drum and I saw him snatch at a small, white box by his side that had a line running up to the IV tube. He pressed the button and a few seconds later his features relaxed. Danny appeared and made a few adjustments, then returned to his spot by the door. Ferrin eased back into the chair, his breathing heavy. He cradled the morphine controller in his hand, but didn't press the button, as if holding it was comfort enough.

"When…he was…in jail," he said, continuing. "He was under wraps. I could…control the situation. No contact, no problems. I tried to protect him. Erased his record. But when he got out, I knew he'd go berserk. It would get back to me, to my family."

The room was quiet, the only sounds the crackling of the fire and the dying man across from me trying to catch his breath. I asked, "What started it all?"

"You want the behind the scenes, huh?"

I said nothing.

Ferrin shrugged. "Wheeler...wanted the broad. Nothing more complicated than that."

"What about Lawrence?"

"Tagging along, night after night. When he saw the girl, he lost his mind. I didn't know anything about it until the night they shot the mother."

"Why'd they do it?"

"She was getting ready to press charges. Wheeler thought he was looking at jail time. Lawrence was in his own world, thought somehow that the girl would be his once the mother was out of the way. They drove over there, who knows what they planned. Idiots."

"Then what?"

Ferrin shook himself, sighed. He seemed tired, uninterested. "Lawrence shot her. They called me in a panic. Wheeler was a nutcase, wanted to kill the girl even though he'd already called dispatch and told them he was standing outside her goddamn house. They had that cockamamie story about the breakin, wanted to say some phantom crook shot her. The story would've fallen apart in two seconds. I told Lawrence to get himself together, plant his holdout gun on the body, and just blame it on the bitch."

"But Wheeler took the fall," I said. "Why?"

"I explained a couple things to him. Like how, if Lawrence was the one that got picked up for the shooting, I'd blame Wheeler for it. And doing life in lockup would look like a great option compared to what I'd do to him. That was the stick."

"And the carrot?"

"That I was Jim Ferrin. That I had connections. That I could make the whole thing go away if I wanted to."

I thought about that. "Then I showed up and took the bait," I said. "I keyed in on Wheeler."

"Why wouldn't you? Wheeler was the one always hanging around the house, trying to bang the mother, making an ass out of himself."

"Then it went to trial and you got him off."

He nodded.

"I guess it was easy," I said. "You had an ace."

"A couple of them," he said.

"Landis?"

"I had some dirt on him. People thought Don didn't have any ambitions, but they were wrong. He had his sights set pretty high, in fact. Wanted to be another Giuliani, but what I had would've buried him."

"So he lost the tape?"

Ferrin shrugged. "I didn't tell him how to do it. Just do it."

"That's it? Don took a dive on the trial?"

"He had some insurance. You don't need to know about it."

I thought some more. Something didn't feel right. "Why Atwater for his attorney? You could've gotten anyone."

Ferrin shook his head, impatient with me. "Why the hell do that? Wheeler can't afford shit and out of nowhere some big time lawyer walks in to defend him? People start following the money and my name comes up? Anyway, I didn't need to have Atwater on the payroll, it was Landis that was the problem and he was already in my back pocket. All I needed her to do was go through the motions. It was just a bonus that it was her third case ever. Landis tossed her softies and she did her part by the numbers."

I sat there, my stomach churning. I'd put most of the story together already, but having it confirmed didn't feel as good as I thought it would. We stared at each other for another minute, then he said, "There it is, Singer. You have it all. Now, what are you going to do with it?'

I blew out a breath and raised my eyes to the coffered ceiling. It was mahogany or some other dark wood, paneled and carved like a Renaissance parlor. It gave a certain monotonous order to the ceiling, like a chessboard above our heads.

"What I
want
," I said, "is to hand all this over to a friend in Homicide and let him go to town on you and your son. I'd be doing myself, the force, and the world a huge favor."

Ferrin said nothing.

"But what I
need
," I said, bringing my gaze down to stare at him, "is to keep Amanda Lane safe. Safe from Lawrence, safe from you. You have no reason to go after her. She doesn't know this side of the story, doesn't know who you are, doesn't know the MPDC like I do."

"What else?"

"I need to make sure Lawrence is dead."

Ferrin shook his head. "You can kill him, Singer, but I'm not going to let you gloat over his body."

"I don't want to gloat, goddamn it," I said, "I want to make sure he can't hurt anybody else."

"He won't," Ferrin said. "He'll be dead in a week. And I don't give a shit about you, Singer. Or the girl. Not if you keep your mouth shut."

"That's it? I take your word for it that Lawrence isn't a threat and you're not coming after me or the girl?"