Pariah (27 page)

He races around his room, yanking open drawers and closets and tossing the contents into the case yawning open on his bed. Rocca and Bartok knew where he was staying. That means there may be
others in the Bartok organization who know where he’s staying. And if that set of people now includes Lucas Bartok, it won’t be long before hell descends on this place.

He thinks it was bad enough when he was being isolated, but now that he’s got people actively trying to kill him too . . .

Shit.

He locks up his bag, performs one last check of the room, then gets the hell out of there.

The door still has yellow crime-scene tape stuck across it. Doyle tears some of it away; then, after a quick look up and down the hallway, he kicks the door open. Somewhere in
the building a dog barks, but at least the big black woman in the neighboring apartment seems to be a sound sleeper.

Doyle steps inside and feels for a light switch. He flicks it on, and a bare bulb shows him his new home. Not exactly the Ritz, he thinks, but then Spinner led a pretty spartan existence.

He closes the door again and puts a couple of Spinner’s locks into place. He looks around. There is an unpleasant odor in the air which Doyle decides it might be better not to identify,
and the bleak apartment looks as though it has been devoid of occupants for months rather than days. Much of the clutter that used to be here has gone. All of the boxes of electronic equipment have
disappeared. Impounded as evidence, presumably, although Doyle can’t help thinking that there may be one or two cops or technicians who are giving nice DVD players for Christmas this
year.

Also gone are the chair, table and tape recorder that formed the centerpiece of the living room the last time Doyle was here. For that he is grateful, although there are other reminders. The
vast dark bloodstain on the carpet, for example.

He is not a believer in the supernatural, but knowing what happened here colors his normally skeptical view. There is a feeling of unearthly presence here. A sharp coldness like a razor blade
scraping the hairs from the nape of his neck. A sensation of things left unfinished.

He doesn’t want to be here. He can still picture Spinner, still hear his screams. The emptiness of the room and the lateness of the hour serve only to amplify these mental sounds and
images.

‘It’s me, man,’ he whispers to the ceiling. ‘Doyle. I got nowhere else to go, man. Look after me, okay?’

He knows he must appear crazy saying these things. When dawn arrives and its light chases away the shadows and shows him the truth, he knows he will rebuke himself for acting like an idiot. But
right now talking to walls doesn’t seem so absurd.

He walks over to the bathroom, switches on another naked bulb. In the corner, something small and black scuttles behind the bath. Doyle tries to overlook the obvious fact that this room is a
stranger to cleansing products.

He steps over to the shower control and turns it on full blast. Another memory jumps to mind, of him almost drowning Spinner beneath this jet of water.

As the steam rises and begins to fill the room, Doyle strips off and does his best to take a look at himself in the grime-caked mirror over the sink. Almost the whole of his left side is swollen
and tender. Tomorrow it’ll be one enormous bruise. He touches his ribs and feels a stab of pain. It hurts to breathe, to walk, to lift his arm. Shit, it hurts to live.

He steps into the bathtub, then moves under the water. It’s hot, and it stings at first, but gradually he becomes accustomed to it. He lets it wash over his body, soothing his tired aching
muscles.

When he’s done, he climbs out and picks up one of Spinner’s old towels. It feels cold and damp, and has the stiffness of fabric that hasn’t been washed for weeks. As he rasps
it over his body, he closes his eyes and tries to imagine that it’s one of the white fluffy ones from his hotel. If he’d been thinking ahead, he would have stolen one before he
left.

He walks back into the living room and opens his case. Pulls out some clothes. He’s worn them before, but they’ll do for tonight. He has the feeling he needs to be dressed. Just in
case.

When he’s got his clothes on, he reloads his Glock, ensuring there’s a round in the chamber. Just in case.

He picks up one of Spinner’s chairs, turns it to face the door, then sits down. It doesn’t escape him that he’s in almost exactly the same position that Spinner was when he
found him.

A thought occurs to him. He goes back to the bathroom, where his jacket is hooked on a door peg. He reaches into the pocket and pulls out the white envelope that Rocca delivered. He brings it
back to his chair, studying the familiar lettering of his name typed across the front.

He sits down, rips open the envelope and begins to read.

Doyle crumples up the letter and throws it across the room. It seems a pitiful gesture of defiance, but it’s all he has. Every battle has been fought and lost. The war is over. Here he is,
stuck in a bare decrepit room amid the stench and the aura of death. Hidden away like the mad relative in the attic. Separated from the rest of humanity so that he can’t hurt them and they
can’t hurt him.

He stares at the door and waits, praying that sleep will overtake him and provide some brief respite from this hell that is a man truly alone.

He comes awake to the sound of a bang. He doesn’t know whether it’s real or imagined. Perhaps his mind is replaying one of the many gunshots it’s witnessed
recently. At first he doesn’t know where he is, his eyes scanning the apartment, wondering what happened to his hotel room. Then, with a groan, he remembers and wishes he’d never woken
up.

He looks down at his watch, feeling a painful tug in his neck after being stuck in such a peculiar position all night. It’s seven-thirty in the morning. A cold gray light filters through
the dirt on the windows. He rises from his chair, wincing with the effort of moving joints and bones and flesh that have been pounded against metal at great speed. He hobbles over to the bathroom.
Treats himself to another hot shower and another session with Spinner’s delightful towels.

As he re-dresses, he hears the drone of the neighbor’s television through the walls. It stops suddenly, to be followed by the click and slam of a door. Doyle steps over to his own front
door and puts his eye to the spy-hole. As the figure of the huge woman comes into view, it fills the whole of his field of vision, the distortion of the eyepiece making her appear even more
spherical than she is. She pauses for a second and turns her head toward Doyle, staring directly at him it seems, before resuming her waddle along the hallway.

Doyle gives her ten minutes to get out of the building, then leaves. Outside, he turns up the collar of his leather coat, partly against the cold but also to hide his face. Feeling like an
over-dramatic spy, he takes a good look around him before setting off down the street. On the next block he finds a small burger joint. He buys a bacon and egg muffin and some coffee, and takes
them back to Spinner’s apartment.

Before he settles down to his breakfast, he switches on Spinner’s television. It’s an old portable, not worth enough to sell for drugs. As he eats, he flicks through the channels, on
the lookout for any local news. He sees nothing about Rocca or Bartok. Nothing about any killings or shootings in the Meatpacking District. All of which tells him that Bartok’s men must have
been the first to discover Sonny Rocca’s dead body. It’s not something about which they would have wanted to make public announcements.

Doyle is ashamed to admit that it comes as something of a relief. He thinks, I’m a cop, involved in a string of fatal shootings, and all I can think about is keeping it under wraps. That
stinks, Doyle. That’s really low, man.

But then how much lower can I get? Look at me. I hand confidential police intelligence over to known criminals. I get smashed up on a car. I kill a guy and then run away. I camp out in a
shit-hole owned by a dead junkie fence. I got mobsters out looking to waste me. And I got this unknown perp willing to waste everyone I so much as look at. A guy who has this uncanny ability to
follow my every move.

Speaking of which, how the fuck does he do that? How does this guy always seem to know what I’m doing? How is it possible for him to have eyes everywhere like that?

Doyle walks across the room, his eyes scanning the floor. He kicks aside a cardboard box, then bends to pick up the ball of paper he threw last night. As he goes to straighten up, something on
the box catches his eye. A picture of a bird stamped onto it in red. He’d noticed the same picture on many of the boxes when he came here to ask for Spinner’s help. What is it about
that bird?

He shakes his head, then turns his attention to the piece of paper as he unfurls and rereads it.

Wherever you go, I know about it. Whoever you speak to, I know about it.

Okay, so how?

Doyle is certain nobody knew about his meetings with Bartok. Not his wife, not his squad. Nobody. So how could the killer know? How could he be watching Doyle that closely, that carefully, that
Doyle never sees him, never knows he’s there? How is that possible?

And then there’s Spinner. Okay, there were a few people who knew about their first meeting at the boxing gym, but Doyle told no one when he came to see Spinner here at his apartment. He
was extra careful to make sure nobody followed him here, and Spinner made it clear that he wasn’t too happy about a walking bullet-magnet being in his vicinity, so he wouldn’t have
blabbed about it either. So how did that news leak out?

It’s like the perp has superhuman powers, Doyle thinks. Like maybe he’s there in the room with me, but he’s invisible. Or maybe he can see through walls or listen from a great
distance.

And he’s not the only one. Take Kurt Bartok. How did he get the killer’s name so quickly? When the various divisions of the NYPD working flat out on this case were getting nowhere,
how could Bartok be so confident he could get the name in just a few hours? And who the fuck was he getting the name from?

Sonny Rocca knew the name too. The killer bought him off – paid him to whack Bartok. It was a very clever move. He couldn’t get close enough to Bartok to do it himself, so he paid
someone else to do it. Nice.

Except, how did he know to do that?

Suppose I’m the perp, Doyle thinks. Psycho that I am, I follow the detective around, acing each and every one of his friends as I go. News reaches my super-sensitive ears that Doyle is now
talking to one Kurt Bartok, so naturally Bartok is next on my list.

I don’t care if they’re good or evil. Make them your friends, and they’re dead.

Problem is, Bartok isn’t like the others. This is a man who expects attempts on his life as a hazard of his profession. This is a man who surrounds himself with an army to prevent any such
efforts reaching fruition.

So what do I do? I know, I’ll approach one of Bartok’s closest bodyguards, offer him a shit-load of money, and he’ll do the job for me.

Yeah, like fuck.

How did the perp even know who Sonny Rocca was, let alone that he was disgruntled with his boss? What made him think he could trust Rocca? What made him so sure that Rocca wouldn’t cap him
as soon as he even broached the idea, or that he wouldn’t immediately spill the beans to Bartok? How did he know there was the remotest chance his offer would be accepted?

His offer.

What was it Sonny said just before he died?

I made him an offer. He made me a better one.

Sonny Rocca made the killer an offer. What kind of offer?

Whatever it was, it means that the killer didn’t need to work out whom to approach to do his dirty work.

Sonny Rocca had already come to him!

Why? Was he acting on Bartok’s behalf? If so, what would Bartok possibly want from this lunatic?

Doyle crumples the letter up again and tosses it to the floor. He doesn’t see the logic in any of this. None of it makes any sense.

He starts to pace. His foot kicks the empty cardboard box. He looks down at it, and sees that bird looking right back at him. He bends down and picks up the box. It used to contain a CD player,
manufactured by a Japanese company. The image of a bird is not part of the original packaging; it was stamped onto it at a later date. Doyle spins the box around, examining each of its sides. On
one end is another stamp, giving details of the consignment. Amongst other things it gives the name of the company that has received this item and will be selling it in its stores.

Trogon Electronics.

And then it all comes back to him.

A conversation. Part of an investigation. Doyle talking to one of the managers at Trogon. Asking him, ‘What the fuck is a trogon, anyhow?’ And the manager replying that it’s a
bird found in Central and South America. Hence the company logo.

You learn something every day.

And the reason Doyle was talking to this guy in the first place was . . .

Doyle races across to his jacket, whips out his cellphone. He speed-dials a number.

‘Eighth Precinct. Detective LeBlanc.’

‘Tommy, it’s me. Cal Doyle.’

‘Cal! How you doin’, man? Making the most of the hotel hospitality?’

Doyle looks around at the peeling paint, the threadbare curtains. ‘Uh, yeah. It’s nice to be waited on like this, you know? Listen, Tommy, can you do something for me?’