“I’m not a police officer, so I wouldn’t know.”
“FDA?”
“What?”
“Food and Drug Administration.”
“No. I’m from Toronto.”
He looked at me for a long moment, making up his mind. Maybe he was picturing the damage that might occur if his friend Marty and I got into it. “Okay,” he said, nodding toward the back of the house. “In the kitchen.” He asked Marty to help Harv out with his carton.
Marty looked disappointed, like he’d missed his chance to impress someone. Maybe himself. “You sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“I can handle it,” Barry said and led me back to a large eat-in kitchen with a round oak table on ornate ball- and-claw legs. A woman sat at the table, surrounded by dozens of pill vials and boxes of all sizes. About a dozen cartons were stacked near the rear door behind her. I looked out the door; no sign of Ryan through its glass panes.
The woman, whom I presumed to be Amy, looked about fifty, with long grey hair pulled into a loose braid and striking grey-green eyes. She wore her clothes baggy and loose: wine-coloured harem pants and a billowing white linen blouse. If she was trying to hide her body, it wasn’t working. Her curves were apparent and sweetly placed. “Who’s your friend?” she asked Barry.
I took out my wallet and showed her my identification. The warmth in her eyes was replaced by a flinty glare. I let Barry look at it too. Amy’s mouth tightened as she looked at her husband. “You walk an investigator right into our kitchen?”
“I’m strictly private,” I assured her. “I’m not connected to the police or the FDA or any law enforcement agency in the U.S.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Information.”
“What kind?”
“This venture of yours has had ramifications you may not know about. At least I hope you don’t.”
“Go on,” Amy said.
“A pharmacist was murdered in Toronto last month. He had been supplying Canadian medications to people here in Buffalo.”
Their voices chimed in together: “What! Who?”
“Kenneth Page.”
Neither showed any sign they knew the name.
“Now another has been targeted,” I said. “A man named Jay Silver.”
“Oh my God,” Amy said.
She knew him. The possibility of his murder was clearly a personal horror, not abstract. Barry motioned her not to say anything but she cut him off with a downward slash of her hand.
“And it’s not just him,” I said. “His entire family will be killed. His wife and five-year-old son too. Jay, Laura and Lucas, all of them.” Listen to their names, I thought. Know them.
“But all he’s done is help people like us get prescriptions without going broke. Why would someone kill him?”
“Because he knows who murdered Kenneth Page and they can’t trust him not to talk. And because the drugs in his store were worth millions. The truck that just left here-that entire load-was from his store. They basically looted it. They weren’t afraid to, Amy, because they don’t expect Silver or his family to live long enough to do anything about it.”
“He’s bullshitting us, Ames. Next he’s going to tell us he should take the product off our hands. Get the fuck out of my house, man. I don’t want to tell you again.”
“You’re going to get yourselves killed.”
“Only if we talk,” Amy cut in.
“Whether you talk or not.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“Because the killing has started. Not just Kenneth Page, not just Silver and his family, but also a guy I worked with, another investigator. He was killed Monday. A witness-a retired old man-was beaten half to death on Wednesday. Someone has to stop them and it seems to have fallen to me. So help me. Please. Tell me who you work for.”
The two of them stayed silent, looking at each other. Then Barry walked over to the table and put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. She covered it with her own. “I’m sorry, Mr. Geller,” Amy said. “I like Jay Silver. I hope nothing bad happens to his family, I really do. But it would be best if you left now.”
I looked at her when I said, “You’ll stand by while a family is killed?”
“He’ll kill us if we talk.”
“Who will?” I asked. “Ricky Messina?”
The fear in her eyes was palpable. “You do know him…”
“Yes,” I said. “But I am not on his side. I can help take him off your backs.”
“You and what army?” Barry scoffed. He drew himself up to his full height and stepped between me and Amy. “That’s enough,” he said. “Get out now.”
“Barry-”
“We have to look out for ourselves. Now for the last fucking time, get out!”
I heard footsteps coming down the hall. A dozen men and women crowded into the doorway, Marty at the front of the pack. I moved toward the back door so none of them could get behind me.
“Everything okay?” Marty asked.
“Fine,” Barry said. “He was just leaving.”
I didn’t move. The room became eerily quiet. Not a word was spoken; there was just the hiss of a candle in a cylindrical glass holder on the window sill.
“I can’t go,” I said.
“You heard Barry,” Marty said. “Out of here, now.”
He put a hand on my left shoulder, squeezed it and said, “I’ll bounce you down the steps if you’re not out by the time I count three.”
Counting three. What did he think this was, a schoolyard? I drove my fist up into his armpit. There’s a cluster of nerves in there that doesn’t much like getting hit. It numbs the arm completely. Marty’s grip loosened and he sank to the floor, his face as pale as marble. Then came the sound of breaking glass behind us. Amy’s head snapped around. The kitchen door had nine glass panes in three rows of three. The pane closest to the doorknob had been shattered and a gloved hand was reaching in through the broken pane and turning the deadbolt.
Amy’s eyes grew as wide as those of a horse in a barn fire. She stood up so fast the heavy oak table went up onto two legs, sending vials of pills of all colours rolling to the floor.
“Oh God,” she gasped. “It’s Ricky. Barry, it’s Ricky. Don’t let him in. Don’t let him touch me. You promised, Barry. You swore.”
Barry started toward the door but it banged open before he was halfway there and Dante Ryan stepped into the kitchen. His right hand was inside his jacket. Barry stopped where he was. Amy’s breathing still came fast and shallow, but the fear in her eyes began to ebb. A strange, threatening man had just broken into her kitchen, but it wasn’t Ricky. I wondered what he had done to get so far under her skin.
“It’s okay,” I said to Ryan. “One guy just got excited.”
“Asshole,” Marty rasped, his forehead beaded with sweat.
“You’ll be all right,” I told him. Then I went to Amy and said quietly, “I told you I wasn’t with Ricky. This man and I are very much against him, in fact. I think he killed all the people I mentioned and tried to kill me. So talk to me. Help us get Ricky out of your life.”
“How?” she whispered. She was trying hard to find some kind of centred calm, but the faint billowing of her blouse showed how shaky she was. “By reporting him to the police? Even if he got life in prison, he’d kill me the day he got out. Slowly, with his knife. He told me. He showed me.” Her hands went to her belly and stayed there as if they were the only thing preventing her insides from spilling out onto the floor.
