I heard a loud, abrasive voice say “Gimme that phone,” and then McDonough was on the line. “We’re not asking, Geller,” he snarled. “We’re telling you to get your useless butt down here now.”
“What do you need a useless butt for? Or should I say another one?”
“Come on, cupcake. Come put your bullshit story on the record.”
“Lighten up, McDonough. We’re on the same side.”
“Same side? We’re not even on the same field,” he rasped. “You’re a waterboy, Geller, a hanger-on. You couldn’t make the real grade, so you grab on to coats like mine. Don’t give me crap about being on my side. You’re more like something stuck to my shoe.”
“And yet you request the pleasure of my company.”
“I’m not requesting shit. I’m telling you to get down here.”
I sighed, then fiddled with the radio again and brought the static back up. “What’s that, McDonough? I couldn’t hear that last part.”
“Get down here now!” I heard him bellow.
“Are you still there?” I called. “What’s that you said? Damn this connection. I’m afraid we’re breaking up.”
The Niagara Peninsula lay ahead of us, a dark outline in the haze over the water. We were in wine country now, passing vineyards where bright strands of wire were intertwined with vines to keep them in neat rows. I told Ryan what Hollinger had said about the same gun killing Page and Franny.
“You know what I’d like to know?” he asked.
“What?”
“Where Ricky Messina was when they were getting killed.”
“Why him?”
“Because people are dying and it isn’t me killing them. And because there’s a Buffalo connection.”
“Maybe we’ll get a chance to ask him.”
“Fine with me,” he said. “Once I get my guns out of the trunk.”
We went through Grimsby, Beamsville and Jordan, bypassed Niagara-on-the-Lake, and headed southeast toward Fort Erie. Traffic thinned out once we were past the exit to the Niagara Parkway and the Falls, so Ryan stayed farther back from the truck than before. Away from the escarpment, the land was entirely flat. We drove past copses of poplars trembling in the warm wind.
I said, “You said something about your stepfather before.”
“Yeah?”
“That he beat you. For sport, you said.”
“So?”
“What was his problem?”
“His problem? I was his problem. Me, Dante Ryan, only son of Sid and the former Mrs. Ryan. My mother was still young and good-looking when she married Dominic. Everyone figured there’d be more kids, but nothing happened. Usually they blame the woman, call her barren, but my mother already had a baby so everyone knew the problem was him, not her. I was living proof he didn’t have the goods. So every chance he got he made me pay. Christ, if I was breathing too loud I got smacked.”
The highway narrowed from three lanes down to two. Ryan moved to the right and slowed slightly, letting a few more cars fall in between us and the truck but always keeping it in sight.
“I tried to kill him once,” Ryan said. “I was maybe seventeen and he had given me a royal beating because he thought I was stealing cigarettes from him. Which I was but fuck him anyway. The next night I go out on a B and E with my friends and I find a gun in the house, in the guy’s bedside table in one of those purple Crown Royal bags. A. 38 snubbie. The next time Dom tried to lay a beating on me, I put the gun on him. Told him what a useless lazy ugly fucker he was and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The ammo was so old it wouldn’t fire. Just my luck, I break into a house where the guy keeps a limp-dick gun in a bag. He really gave it to me that time, Dom, I mean with all the trimmings. I couldn’t walk right for a month. That’s when I started teaching myself about guns. Never bought or stole another cheapie. To this day I arm myself only with the best.”
“Is he still with your mother?”
“Dom? Nope.”
“Still alive?”
“Definite nope.”
“What happened?”
“I left home soon as I could. Once I was established and could support my mother, she had no more use for him. I’m pretty sure he was beating her too. So she kicked the bum out.”
“And?”
“He must have been overcome with grief. Maybe burdened with remorse over the way he treated her. Fuck, the way he treated me. Either way, a few weeks later, sadly, he took his own life.”
“How?”
“Shot himself in the head.”
“How many times?” I asked.
CHAPTER 42
Buffalo: Friday, June 30
Rich Leckie watched through a gap in the curtains as his wife and daughter left the house. He flinched when the front door slammed, even though he knew it meant someone going out, not coming in. He watched as they got into the car, watched Leora back out of the driveway onto the street, not paying attention as usual, forcing an eastbound driver to swerve around her back end, flashing a finger and blasting his horn.
And finally they were gone. He was alone, thank God. He was on his way back to bed when a dark thought crept into his mind: Leora hadn’t locked up behind her. The new deadbolt hadn’t turned. It made a distinctive click and he hadn’t heard it. Panic rose up in him. He felt like rats were crawling over his bare feet. He could hardly swallow his own spit. He had to go down and lock up but what if it was too late?
What if Ricky was already in?
No. It couldn’t be. Rich would have heard something. Footsteps. Old floorboards creaking. A high girlish laugh. The sound of a gun barrel slashing through the air. Of cartilage breaking.
He had to go downstairs now, before it was too late, and lock up. Stupid fat fucking Leora, putting him in a spot like this. Okay, she didn’t know about Ricky-he told her he had gotten mugged that night-but she knew better than to leave the door unlocked. This was still Buffalo, and hardly the best part. He tried to breathe through the panic but the best he could manage were shallow gasps. He looked around for something he could use as a weapon, settling for an African fertility statue Leora had bought four years before Leigh-Anne was conceived. Eighteen inches high and made of acacia, as good a club as he would find. Clutching the statue in his right hand, holding onto the banister with his left, he moved silently down the stairs. Halfway down, his bathrobe fell open and he cursed but couldn’t close it, afraid to let go of the banister or his club. As he neared the bottom of the stairs he paused-exposed, vulnerable, ridiculous with his shrivelled little turtle-head dick hanging there in a nest of grey hair-and listened with every ounce of concentration he could muster. He could hear the air conditioning unit humming away in the front room. The fridge rumbling in the kitchen. Water dripping-why couldn’t Leigh-Anne ever close the faucet all the way? But no footsteps, no laughter. No sound of a round being chambered. And then he could see the front door, saw that the deadbolt handle was horizontal, not vertical-locked, thank God-and he took the last step down, missed it and landed jarringly hard on his left heel. His knee hyperextended and slid forward, sending him hard onto his back, fertility statue still in hand.
Then came tears. They leaked out of his eyes at first, then fell in hot wet streams, his body shaking like he was having a seizure. He let go of the statue and pressed his fists to his eyes and curled up on the floor and held himself tight, rocking back and forth until there were no tears left. When he felt strong enough to stand he made his way into the kitchen where he blew his nose, then ran cold water into his cupped hands and gently washed his face. He sat down heavily at the kitchen table, flexing his knee gently and rubbing his tailbone.
