Friday Edition, The (24 page)

There was silence as Jonathan returned to his barstool. He looked at her. “It was one avenue of moving dirty money,” he said. “We had one bogus company that allowed cartel accountants to bank hundreds of millions of dollars in drug profits in New York City accounts alone two years ago. We moved so much money under the guise of wholesale gold sales that it raised the price of gold in L.A. that same year.”

He was focused on her when she spoke to him, asking questions. But when he answered he invariably gazed off into the distance as if the words he wanted hung somewhere on a far wall.

Sam shook her head in disbelief. “You talk as if that’s something to be proud of.”

He ignored her comment and continued. “That money was moved from New York into accounts in European and Latin American nations, before eventually ended up in accounts in Panama.”

Sam remembered the information Brady had shown her. She considered telling Jonathan now. The flash drive Brady had given her was in a safe place, but still she decided against telling him.

His words pulled her from her thoughts. “There the money was cleansed and deposited safely. The money was used to buy anything you could imagine. Airplanes, real estate, cars, boats. It helped pay cartel employees salaries and fund cocaine production from Colombia and black tar heroin from Mexico.”

“Not to mention you,” she said, having to push the words out with all her strength.

“You can tell me I was oblivious to everything going on and blame it on my drinking all you want,” she went on. “But with the exception of our taking yearly vacations to Hawaii, we lived in a modest house, in a middle class neighborhood, drove modest cars and enrolled our daughter in public schools. Where’s your take of the cartel money?”

Jonathan was silent at her remark before giving her an imaginary tip of the hat. “I have to give you credit, Samantha. It looked normal on the surface, didn’t it? The car, the house, everything. The money has been nicely deposited in, as I said earlier, in several banks in Europe and the Cayman Islands. I had planned to live a little differently when I retired.”

“You’re out of your mind. How could you ever think you’d get away with this?” She stared at him dumbfounded, unable to believe what she was hearing. It felt as if she had been struck over the head with a shovel.

She went on. “You’ve rationalized this to the point where it’s acceptable in your own mind, haven’t you? You think you’ve done nothing wrong, don’t you?”

He held her stare but said nothing.

She shook her head. “But why?”

“Why? You should know why, Samantha, Because I grew up without a goddamn thing. Not a goddamn lousy thing. I’d be goddamned if I was going to go through the rest of my life living like I did as a kid.”

Sam spoke feeling a deep sadness in her heart. “You were working hard to earn an honest living? One that didn’t have to destroy any lives. One with integrity and where you didn’t have to keep looking over your shoulder or jumping at a knock at the door? Wasn’t that enough?”

Jonathan pursed his lips, but offered no response. Sam waited a moment more, but when it became apparent he planned to say nothing, she rose from the barstool. She took the lasagna from the oven and set it on a counter. The top layer had burned. That’s how she felt inside, seared.

Another disturbing thought occurred to her. It made her feel lightheaded and she drew a deep breath involuntarily. “Ruth sent me to Champ’s,” she began. “Ruth told me the afternoon I visited her that Robin hadn’t been to an AA meeting in months. She told me Robin had started drinking again and had been going to Tim’s Place.”

“It was a lie, Samantha.”

Her eyes became thin, angry slits. “You … you told her to tell me those things … those … those lies about Robin?”

“I have to give Ruth credit. When we first approached her, she refused to have anything to do with us. She said she wouldn’t betray Robin like that, but we made it too good for her, Sam. Money will do that to people.”

Sam felt a piercing stab in her heart. Her mind was reeling. When she spoke her voice was heavy with emotion. “Ruth was Robin’s AA sponsor for years. She … she helped her through so many hard times. I know Robin. She trusted Ruth with her life.”

Sam wasn’t sure she could speak any longer without dissolving into tears. She knew that’s what Jonathan wanted. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her weakness.

She stared at him levelly. “I … I know why you’ve come. You think by confessing you’ve cleansed your soul and killing me will be the easy way out. Then you can go on with your little operation. But it won’t be that easy, Jonathan.”

“You’re wrong, Samantha …”

His voice fell away, as he noticed for the first time the brown Izod sweater Sam wore. She had gotten in the habit of putting on Robin’s sweater when she came home. It brought her a sense of comfort. Tonight she wore it over a white turtleneck and a pair of faded jeans. “That was hanging on the doorknob, the night I was there,” he said.

She looked at him and noticed he was eyeing her sweater. She absentmindedly ran a hand along her sleeve and then she finally had to believe it. She looked at him in absolute horror.

“I did it myself …”

She heard him clearly. He let his words fall all over her, as he recounted what happened to Robin on Christmas Eve …

Jonathan had placed the gun to Robin’s head.

It was his favorite weapon, the 45-caliber Glock semi-automatic. The firearm fit as comfortably in his palm as the Latex glove fit over his hand. The muzzle was a perfect fit against her temple. He watched as she winced slightly at the keen, cold feel of metal against her skin, but otherwise she hardly moved. He squeezed his hand firmly around the butt of the pistol and effortlessly released the safety.

He had no intent to kill her this way.

Death would come another way. Slowly. One swallow after another. With his right hand, he set the bottle of Jack Daniels he brought lightly on the kitchen table. He watched as her gaze flickered from the bottle to him.

Their eyes met. Hers were wide and pleading, filled with the unknown. He forced himself to look away, remembering how she smiled when she first opened the door.
Why shouldn’t she invite me in
?

She knew him, after all. He entered her place and she turned the deadbolt against the evil in the world, thinking she was safe. She gazed at him intently with blue eyes that were large and expressive. He knew she was happy to see him. He even ventured to say she looked relieved.

But when he pulled the gun from his coat, her disposition faded to desperation. The color of her eyes turned dark. He looked at the liquor bottle on the table. He removed the weapon from her temple only long enough to motion for her to open it.

He could not help his smile. What a clever way for her to die. Of course, everyone would think it was the holidays and the workload and stress of being an assistant district attorney that had finally defeated her. “Drink it,” he commanded. His teeth were clenched. His voice tight.

But she didn’t make the slightest gesture toward the bottle.

“Please,” she said, making a meek and useless attempt to hide her apprehension.

“I ... I can’t ... you know I can’t,” she said and tried desperately not to stammer. Fear consumed her the way fire would a piece of paper. She was servile. He knew her not to be submissive, but the shock of his betrayal was simply too much.

“You don’t have a choice,” he said. He hesitated briefly. “You were warned. You were foolish not to stop then.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

He answered by pressing the muzzle harder against her temple. She whimpered slightly at the sudden and sharp pain and tried to pull away, but he kept the firearm pressed firmly against her head.

She looked at the bottle and lifted her hand off her lap and grasped it firmly around the neck. She lifted it slowly to her lips and began to drink. She gagged, then spit the first taste all over the kitchen table.

It was all he could do to keep from striking her. “I won’t tell you again,” he said.

He watched as she tried to keep from crying, but the tears spilled helplessly over her lids, slid down her cheeks and landed on her cashmere sweater. He knew it wouldn’t take long for her to begin to feel the effects of the alcohol, especially given her slender frame. He was careful not to touch her. Though the gloves would not leave fingerprints, he had to be careful not to grab her firmly. She could bruise easily and that could return to haunt him.

Within an hour, half the bottle was gone. He forced her to scribble out the words to a suicide note. She had no choice and did as she was instructed. Feeling the effects of the alcohol, her handwriting was wobbly. She cried while she wrote and her tears smeared some of the ink on the paper. When she finished, she moved from the kitchen table to the couch. He opened the sliding glass door and the air from the crisp night crept inside. He stepped outside. His breath rose and the evening breeze caught it and carried it off in a northerly gust. He commanded her to come to the door. Drunkenly defiant, Robin refused to move from the couch.

“The cold air will do you good,” he assured her.

Then, moving like a puppet, she rose from the couch and staggered toward the patio. At the threshold, she stumbled. The glass dropped from her hand, shattering on the cement floor, splattering the amber liquid on his neatly pressed pant leg.

He jerked the butt of the gun back to strike her, but stopped. He was instantly sorry, but in this moment of rage, his anger was stronger than his will not to touch her. He grabbed her firmly by the arm and pushed her from the glass door toward the railing. It happened quickly. His force and her unsteadiness caused her to tumble over the railing.

She fell most of the way before he reached the balcony.

He saw her broken body lying twisted on the frozen ground, crumpled and limp as a heap of rags. He had to leave. He looked at the fragments of glass on the ground. He closed the glass door, but decided it was better to leave it ajar. He left the lights on in the living room and turned on the stereo. The rock-n-roll station was playing Jingle Bells.

He shouldered the pistol and put on his overcoat. He opened the door and looked up and down the hallway corridor before going to the elevator. As he walked, he remembered how she looked when she opened her door. Her eyes had been friendly, happy to see him. As he fished for his keys from his coat pocket, he remembered the terror in them when he grabbed her and pushed her toward the railing.

He was certain he could erase the last image of her eyes from his mind. The look of horror. Of dread. Yes, he was confident he could easily forget those images. But forgetting how she looked at him when she had first opened the door would be another matter. He was convinced he would never forget that look.

Inside the elevator he pressed the down button. He removed the Latex gloves and stuffed them in his coat pocket. He had known her eyes at times to have the radiant look of sapphires. They beamed with brightness. They were what made her a beautiful woman. Almost angelic.

He walked briskly across the street and disappeared around the corner.

“She screamed only once when she went over the railing,” Jonathan said as he finished telling Sam about Christmas Eve. “It was just for a second then she fell the rest of the way in silence. She was on the ground face down when I got to the railing.”

Sam stared at him with vacant eyes. Her mind was empty. Her heart hollow. She was numb with shock. She realized she had been holding her breath as he spoke.

After a long moment of silence, Sam became aware of the refrigerator humming softly. “Go to hell,” she said and got up and moved to the living room.

She had the energy of a 40-watt bulb. Her knees were weak, but she managed to reach the chair before they buckled. She had no feeling, as though the pause button was stuck on her interior remote control.

Jonathan came and stood beside her, but she ignored him. She kept her attention fixed on the streetlights that glowed in the distant landscape. She blinked slowly and watched the stream of traffic moving along Sixth Avenue.

He yanked her by the hair and forced her to look at him. She gasped. No emotion flickered in his eyes.

“Is that why you were looking for liquor earlier?” she breathed. “Are you going to do the same thing to me? Force it down my throat and make me drink until I can’t stand up?”

He pulled her hair harder. The force of it caused her to fall into him.

“Why don’t you just put your .45 to my head, Jonathan, and get it over with. It’ll be quicker. Because, being the lush I am, nobody would think twice if I were to drink myself to death.”

She went on. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what you do. A story will be published in my paper on Friday. Maybe I won’t be alive to write it, but the
Perspective
has the story and it’s coming out. There’s nothing you can do to stop that now.”

He released her with enough force that she crashed against the back of the chair. The pain cleared her senses and a sudden surge of strength and rage pulsed through her. She smiled confidently and forced herself to sit straight. She studied Jonathan for a reaction, but he was unreadable. “I received a flash drive last night with all the evidence about your little operation. It’s in a safe place, so it doesn’t matter what happens to me now. The others helping me have all the information they need. There will be a story. They will write it.”