Cold Night (Jack Paine Mysteries) (18 page)

"So I thought I could make it like it was again, show you that what I did meant nothing. I wanted to take it back.

"And now I have. Oh, God, please, Jerry, tell me it never happened .
. ."

His uncle wept into his hands.

When the state troopers came through the door a half hour later, he hadn't moved. As they pulled Uncle Martin from the bed he saw his pleading eyes and he said quietly, "It never happened," and his uncle's last look was one of deliverance and peace . . .

"That's my most painful memory," he whispered to Rebecca Meyer. Somewhere he had begun to cry, and he let her hold him, rocking the poison out of him. "Oh, God," he wept, "he never touched me, Uncle Martin never touched me,
oh, Dad .
. ."

The night continued. She rocked him, and, sometime near dawn, she whispered to him, "You're well."

He laughed and said, "You're right."

He moved against her, and for a time they didn't talk. Paine fleetingly thought of the sounds of the tape in Barker's office.

"What about Gerald?" he whispered.

"Gerald can go to hell."

When they had finished, the sun was rising and she said, "What are you going to do today?"

"That depends on whether it means anything to you that I don't work for the Barker Agency anymore, and don't have a contract to find out who killed your father."

"My sister can go to hell, too," she said. She looked deep into his eyes. "Here's a contract of your own," she whispered, kissing him.

He smiled. "Then I'm going to see someone who knows more than he told me."

He tried to hold her but she got up. "I have to go. Call me later."

"I will," he said.

"Call me," she whispered to him, and suddenly sleep overtook him, and her face stayed with him, and, for a time in his sleep, he knew who she was.

I
n the morning he felt whole. He awoke alone, but for the first time in two days he felt like a live man. His ribs ached, but it was a dull, inconsequential hurt he could live with.

He dressed and went out of the bedroom, down the long stairs and out through the front door as Gerald, in his tennis togs, came in.

"Well, well," Gerald said. "Look who's returned from the dead." His voice was mock sweet. He pointed with his racket to the far end of the driveway. "Rebecca had your car brought up here from . . . wherever it was."

He turned to go but Paine stopped him.

"Why do you hang around here?" Paine asked him.

"Two reasons," Gerald answered. "Money, and money."

"Cute answer," Paine said. "Does Rebecca know any
thing about your coke habit? You're pretty stupid to leave
the stuff in the bathroom upstairs. I found it next to your cheap aftershave."

Gerald's face clouded. "She doesn't know about it."

Paine nodded. "I didn't think so. I've got a friend in the police department who grew up Irish poor and loves to bust rich jerks like you. Should I give him a call or would you like to get lost?"

He watched Gerald's face as the options dropped away from him.

"I'll leave," he said finally.

"Don't look so sad," Paine said. "There are plenty of other tennis courts in Westchester."

The keys were in the ignition of Paine's car. He pulled out of the driveway, feeling like he'd been away from the world for a year. His ribs were telling him that a year off might not be a bad idea.

He drove down to Croton. The blue Chrysler was gone from the front of Hartman's house. In its place was a white Mercedes. It looked like the car that had followed him to the funeral home.

Paine went to the front door, tried the lock, which was engaged.

He stepped off the stoop and walked to the small bay window fronting the living room. He heard a television set, a baseball announcer laughing, the rise of the crowd noise and the announcer's laughter turning to excitement.

"Holy cow!" the television said. It sounded like a Yankee had hit a home run.

"Holy cow," Paine muttered to himself, shaking his head at the bad luck of the man sitting in Hartman's chair smoking a cigarette and watching the baseball game. It had to be Childs. It would be his bad luck to lose his teeth before Hartman did.

Paine walked calmly back to the front door and kicked it in with the flat of his right foot. The bolt splintered out of the jam and Paine pushed the door the rest of the way open. He walked in. Childs was up, his cigarette still in his hand.

"Shit,
" he said, dropping the cigarette and running to the back of the house.

Paine went after him. He kicked the television off its stand as he went by. The sound stayed on, increasing in volume. "Holy cow!" the announcer shouted.

Childs turned from the kitchen table, leveling a .44 at Paine as he entered. It was a wide miss. Paine ran at him and drove him into the refrigerator. Childs dropped the gun and tried to drive his fist into the back of Paine's head. He struck at Paine's rib cage. Paine groaned and loosened his grip. Childs scrambled away. Paine straightened to see the back door fly back on its hinges. Childs disappeared into the backyard.

Paine followed. His hurt lope turned into angry pursuit. Childs vanished into the yawning opening of the garage. Paine saw another figure in there, working under the upraised hood of the blue Chrysler.

Paine returned to the kitchen, retrieved Childs's .44 and walked back into the yard, keeping the wide mouth of the garage diagonal to him.

"Let's talk," Paine called into the garage.

"Fuck you," Hartman's voice answered.

The blue Chrysler's rear end butted invitingly out the garage door. Paine took aim at it, putting a slug into the rear panel just above the gas tank.

"Shit,"
Childs shouted from the far reaches of the garage.

"Here's what's going to happen," Paine said. "I'm going to pump shots into the gas tank until one of them hits it. When that happens, gasoline and metal will blow right through your fucking faces. Got anything to say?"

"Fuck you," Hartman called out.

Paine put another slug into the side of the car, a little lower.

"Maybe the next one," Paine said.

"Jesus,"
Childs answered, but once again Hartman yelled, "Fuck you!"

Paine aimed another shot at the Chrysler, shattering the back windshield.

There was fast arguing and Paine moved toward the side of the garage as Hartman ran out into the open with a shotgun, pulling off one chamber and shouting. He stopped shouting and found himself out in the open with Paine behind him. Paine took careful aim.
"Drop it,
" he said, but Hartman wheeled with the shotgun, pulling off the other chamber. His shot flew into the air as Paine's hit him just under the chin and he got a surprised look on his face and took a couple of breaths through the hole in his neck and then dropped, gasping on the ground like a banked catfish.

"Enough of this shit," Paine said. He walked to the doorway of the garage and fired two more shots into the tank of the Chrysler.

One of them flared the tank and Childs ran screaming out of the garage as it blew. The back of his shirt caught fire. He ran blindly at Paine, and Paine punched him and threw him onto his back and snuffed the flames from his shirt.

Paine stood and put his foot on Childs's chest.

"Let's talk."

"We should have killed you in that parking lot," Childs whimpered.

"You were supposed to, asshole, weren't you?" Paine moved his foot up to Childs's neck and pressed.

Childs said nothing, so Paine pressed harder. "Weren't you?"

"Yes," Childs gasped.

"Who do you work for? Hartman told me you worked for Paterna but that was bullshit, right?"

Childs said nothing, and Paine increased the pressure on his neck until he began to fight for breath.

"Tell me. That's Paterna's Mercedes out front. Who gave it to you?"

Childs was losing his battle for breath; he nodded abruptly, and when Paine released the pressure on his windpipe he gasped, "Henry Kopiak."

"You work for Kopiak? Paterna did, too?"

Childs nodded listlessly.

From inside, the baseball game still droned on loudly, balls and strikes, runs and outs, the passing of an early autumn afternoon with a summer game.

Paine bent down over Childs, the twinge of his broken ribs telling him he shouldn't do that. "Call an ambulance for your asshole friend," he said. "And like I told him, you're the kind of scumbags that'll never get it right."

R
ebecca answered, and he said, "Hello."

"Jack," she said.

"You sound relieved to hear from me."

"Someone threatened to kill me this morning."

There was a cold place in his heart. "Do you know who it was?"

She sounded upset. "No."

"I don't want you to stay there," Paine said. "There's a place upstate my brother and I own." He told her about the key in the hollowed stump. "Go there and wait for me. I think I'm at the end of this thing."

"Where are you, Jack?"

"I'm going to see your father's lawyer, Henry Kopiak. He was the one who pulled Paterna's strings. When I'm finished with him I'll meet you. Would you rather I call Bob Petty?"

"I don't trust anyone."

"Then do what I said. Someone is getting very desperate, Rebecca."

"I love you," she said.

She hung up before he did.

There was nothing phony about Henry Kopiak's office. It was the real thing, not like Les Paterna's cobbled dream of class. This was the Princeton Club, the good old men, the yachts and polo ponies, the Governor's Ball, the handshakes in small sitting rooms after brandy and cigars. Old money. The root within the root of all evil.

When he walked in, Kopiak was staring out a wide window that gave the same view of the Hudson that Morris Grumbach had bought for himself. His hands were behind his back, the classic pose of rich lawyers in deep thought.

"I wasn't able to find Paterna's brown folder before I got fired," Paine said.

"That doesn't matter," Kopiak said, not turning. "Gloria Fulman and I wanted to see how much you knew. It was Gloria who decided to have you discredited and then killed. There was also the slim chance that you would find the folder, which would tell us who was killing everyone."

Kopiak turned. On the low sill of the wide window was a bottle of Chivas Regal and a single crystal glass.

"I don't want to die, Mr. Paine," Kopiak said. "It's as simple as that. I've tried to control this thing all along, but someone has been killing everyone down the line and I know that I'm at the top of the list. Gloria Fulman is already a virtual prisoner in her Boston apartments; there was an attempt on her life when she was in New York and I just can't live like that. I'd rather go to prison than be dead."

Kopiak's hands shook. Paine had seen him that one time in his office, and now his clubbiness and arrogance had faded like an outmatched number 10 horse in a crowded field. He was a frightened, beaten man.

"I've telephoned the one other person left in this thing, and when he gets here I intend to settle with him and then turn myself in." He smiled wanly at Paine. "You may do the honors, if you wish."

"I'd like to hear the whole thing," Paine said.

Kopiak ran his hands through his hair. There was a photo on his desk, framed, turned so that Paine or any other visitor could see it, of a smiling, middle-aged woman flanked by two college boys. The woman looked content. The boys looked like the kind that got letters on their jackets, drank moderately, had perky girlfriends.

"I want you to know something first," Kopiak said. He managed to pour himself another drink and get half of it down. "I want you to know that I made two mistakes in my career, and I never did anything else wrong in forty-five years of practice." His voice strengthened with self-justification. "That's a long time, Mr. Paine. Forty-five years."

He lowered his voice, using his glass as an emphatic pointer. "There was a time when I wanted to run for office, Mr. Paine. That was my weakness. To do that, you have to make connections, and you have to make money. I made both.

"I met Morris Grumbach and his wife, Jane, at a fund-raising dinner for a local congressman. I was up on the same slate for state senator. In those days I was surrounded by men who thought I could go far beyond that. Congressman, they said, and then senator, and then . . ." He laughed bitterly. "Those were the Kennedy years, and a Catholic Pollack with connections could dream.

"Grumbach was a blowhard, but not unpleasant. Came into his money almost by mistake; his father had filed a basic patent and the family got rich overnight. He acted like he still didn't know if he deserved it.