Mission Flats (45 page)

And at some point he realizes the truth: He has committed a murder. The revelation does not come all at once like a bolt of lightning. No, one day it is simply there and Trudell can’t be quite certain when it arrived. Maybe it has always been there and he chose not to see it. But there it is, the undeniable truth – Artie Trudell is a murderer. Or an accomplice or a coconspirator or a joint venturer or whatever the lawyers will choose to call it. The technical term does not really matter. Whatever name the lawyers assign, Trudell knows the truest description is the simplest:
MURDERER
. He knows, at any rate, that he can’t live with the secret any longer.

‘Martin, I don’t know what to do.’ Trudell squeezes his head with the heels of his hands as if he could squeeze the thoughts of the
MURDERED
man back down. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘I
didn’t murder anyone,’ Trudell corrects him.

‘Did he come to you, Franny?’

‘Yeah, he came to me.’

‘And?’

‘He told me the whole thing, just like I’m telling you. Told me he was a murderer, and what should he do? I—’ Franny’s pudgy fingers worked his cheeks. ‘I wasn’t sure. I needed time to think about it. You don’t just roll out of bed and indict a cop for murder. I told Artie he did the right thing coming to me and all. But deep down I wasn’t sure he did the right thing. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any of it. See, Artie was right: He was a murderer. We could have prosecuted him, sure. So here was this friend coming to me for help, and what was I gonna do? I didn’t know. I said I’d figure out the best way to handle it and get back to him but he should get himself a lawyer too. In the end, it was going to be up to the DA, Lowery, whether to indict the both of them or just Gittens. It was Lowery’s call. You could cut Artie a deal maybe, but they were both up there on that bridge. I didn’t know what to do.’

His eyes fell back to that picture on the desk.

‘I hesitated.’

Maybe it is everything else. Maybe it is the same static that is in Trudell’s head every day now, the background noise that has come to obscure every other thought: Frank Fasulo, gephyrophobia, the Sagamore Bridge.
MURDERER
. Of course Gittens will find a way out of all that. Gittens is still helping him out, helping him keep up appearances. It was Gittens, after all, who set up this raid by feeding Trudell and Vega the tip from Raul. Hasn’t it always been Gittens who nurtured Trudell’s career ever since he and Vega came to Narcotics? Hasn’t Gittens always been able to find a way out? . . .

Boom!

Boom!

He sights along the barrel to that weak point, the fissure in the door. That is where the battering ram is being held – and six inches higher – no, higher still, because Artie Trudell is so goddamn big – eight inches above the point of impact.
Boom!
The door rocks again, and the whole building shudders. The floor beneath Gittens’s feet quivers with the impact.

‘I suspected it even then,’ Franny told us. ‘I didn’t know for sure, but I had my suspicions. Artie’d told me what Gittens did to Fasulo. Then the way Gittens got to the red door so fast that night and jumped in front of the door without a second thought . . . I had my doubts. But I kept my mouth shut because it still looked like Braxton was the guy. Now I’m certain. Vega’s dead, and I’m certain. Gittens shot Artie. I just know it.’

‘And Raul? Who was Raul?’

Franny shrugged. ‘Maybe there was a Raul, maybe not. Maybe Gittens did get a tip from some rat and he used it to set up Artie. I figure there was no Raul – Gittens was Raul. But what’s the difference? Gittens was the shooter, that’s all that matters. Who knows, maybe Braxton was Raul. All those years Gittens had this know-it-all snitch in the Flats, and all those years Braxton managed to skate on just about everything. That sure sounds like someone was protecting him. But I don’t know. We’ll never get the truth about Raul.’

‘But you stood up in court, you vouched for it. You said the whole story about Raul was the truth.’

‘Chief Truman, I’m a lawyer. I wasn’t there. I only know what my witnesses tell me.’

‘Bullshit.’ John Kelly, who’d been listening to the entire tale in silence, practically spat the word in Franny’s face. ‘Gittens lied, and you played along. You knew something wasn’t right, but it was easier to prosecute Braxton with lies than to figure out what Gittens was really up to.’

John Kelly glared at Franny with obvious contempt, as if Kelly, not Braxton, had been the victim of Franny’s cowardice and lying.

‘I—’ Franny fell silent. The little burst of composure and vitality that had carried him through the story was extinguished. You could almost see the light go out. For all his brio and talent, Franny Boyle’s life since 1987 had been a relentless ebbing. He must have felt himself receding from that time, carried off by the current.