cause? I mean, you did drug him up, stick the murder weapon in his pocket, and force him to run into the traffic on Ocean Parkway.”
Barto snickered again. “You shoulda seen him bounce and skid, man. It was pretty cool.”
We had nearly reached the crest of the hill. Just a hundred feet ahead and down the hill, in a small glen was where the workers’ quarters had been. I had no doubt that was where Brightman and Katy were waiting. Only a few yards before the crest, Barto ordered me to stop.
“Turn around!”
When I turned, I saw Barto raising his weapon at me. What the fuck are you doing? This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen, asshole. I opened my mouth to say something, but found I was so angry I couldn’t speak. He ordered me to back up to the crest. When I stopped, he put twenty or thirty shots at my feet and above my head. I didn’t have time to react. He shook his head at me.
“Nah, you ain’t a puker,” he said, regarding me with a sick kind of admiration. “You look more pissed off than scared.”
“Can I ask you one thing before we go?”
“Sure.”
“Do you really think you’re going to get away with this?”
“Me, I am gonna get away with it. As for Brightman…I don’t think he gives a shit whether he will or not. I think he’s sorta beyond that. Now, let’s go.”
When we came over the crest, I saw the little campsite set up where I remembered the foundation had been. There was a sizeable fire going, a pretty big tent, and not another thing in sight. This was no place for a Brooklyn boy to die. Still, any place was better than a hospital, I thought. As we approached, the tent flap opened and Brightman emerged. Katy was nowhere to be seen. That wasn’t good for a lot of reasons. While I was still confident he hadn’t killed her, I had no hope of saving her if I didn’t know where she was to be saved.
“Hello, Moe. Still not feeling very smug, are you?”
“Where’s Katy?”
“She’s close enough.”
“Where’s Katy?”
“Ralph, please teach our guest some manners.”
I clenched in anticipation of the blow, but it didn’t come.
“Cut the shit, Brightman,” Barto said, “and let’s get this over with.”
“Where’s Katy?”
“Goodness, Moe, you sound like a broken record.”
“CD.”
“What?”
“There are no records anymore, Brightman. It’s CDs and soon there won’t be any of those. That’s your problem, you’re living too much in the past.”
“Oh, yeah, do you think so? I’ll show you what your problem is.”
He went back into the tent and came out dragging Katy by her hair. She didn’t struggle. That scared me. She was trussed up, hands to ankles behind her, a strip of duct tape across her mouth. He pulled her up onto her knees. She wasn’t bleeding and there were no obvious cuts or bruises on her, but her eyes were impassive. I hoped it was just shock, but I knew it was more, much more. The last month had plunged her into a deep well with slick and
very steep walls. Brightman had an automatic in his waistband, but asked Barto for my 38.
“ This is your problem, Moe,” he said, pulling back the hammer of my. 38 and pressing the short barrel to Katy’s temple. He didn’t pull the trigger. It wasn’t time. He hadn’t gone through all of this to shoot her within two minutes of my arrival. That was good. The longer he took, the better our chances of getting out of this, if not unscathed, then alive.
“I’m not playing, Brightman.”
“Yeah,” Barto seconded, “shoot the bitch so I can kill this asshole. Let’s get outta here.”
“Quiet! I want to savor this. Once she’s dead, I don’t care what you do to him. That’s the deal.”
“Whatever,” Barto said.
Brightman got on his knees next to Katy and wrapped his free arm around her shoulder. “I just want you to know that this is all your ex-husband’s doing. Did he ever tell you about what really happened between us? Shake your head yes or no.”
Katy, her eyes still impassive, shook no.
“I didn’t think so. Moe does like his secrets, doesn’t he?”
Silent tears began rolling down Katy’s cheeks and I nearly collapsed. Secrets, the gifts that keep on giving. The pain my silence had caused seemed endless. In a voice barely above a whisper, Brightman explained to Katy how instead of accepting my gold detective’s shield and living happily ever after, I had reopened the investigation into Moira Heaton’s murder. He told her how I had backtracked and discovered that he, Brightman, not Ivan Alfonseca, had murdered Moira.
“Moira knew too much,” he said. “She knew that I had killed a neighborhood boy when I was a kid. I hadn’t meant to kill him, not really, but what do intentions ever have to do with anything, especially in the face of murder?”
The flow of tears was much heavier now and Katy’s body shook, the tape muffling her sobs.
“But did your husband go to the police with the truth? No, he didn’t. Moe, tell Katy what you did.”
“I told you, Brightman, I’m not playing.”
Barto shoved me in the back. “Do it!”
“No.”
“Okay, then I’ll do it,” Barto said. Brightman’s eyes got angry, but Barto had the bigger gun. “Moe set Brightman up and goaded him into a confession. Even made him piss his pants. What Brightman didn’t know was that his wife and Thomas Geary had watched and listened to the whole thing. There. Now, can we get this over with?”
I could see in his eyes that Brightman was getting ready for the finale.
“How could I go to the police?” I said. “I had no proof and all the witnesses were dead.”
“I thought you weren’t playing,” he said.
“I waited until you started lying.”
He shoved the. 38 into Katy’s ribs so hard she crumpled in pain. He pulled her back up. The passivity was gone from her eyes.
“That’s right, instead of being satisfied with ruining my career, he had to hurt my wife. Ruining me professionally didn’t really cut it for Moe Prager. No, he wanted to punish me in a personal way, so he used my wife.”
“I always regretted doing that. I realized I’d punished her more than you.”
“Katerina divorced me in about thirty seconds. She couldn’t understand how she could have shared her bed with a murderer and not have known. That question haunted her for the rest of her life. Did you know she-”
“-died last summer. Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Katerina was really sweet and one of the most stunningly beautiful women I’ve ever met,” I said. “Cancer, right?”
“No, it wasn’t cancer, it was the haunting and the guilt.”
“Guilt?”
“Oh, so there are things you don’t know?” Brightman taunted.
He whispered something into Katy’s ear that I couldn’t hear. There was immediate and crushing ache in Katy’s eyes. I hadn’t seen anything like it since the miscarriage, since Connie Geary’s wedding day, when Katy sat sobbing in a stall of the women’s bathroom at the Lonesome Piper County Club. She sobbed now so that even the tape couldn’t contain the sound of it. She cried so hard that her body seemed to convulse.
“Do you want to know what I told her, Moe?”
No. “Yes.”
“I told her that a week after you confronted me on the street and got me to confess my sins, Katerina had an abortion. She was empty after that, empty ever after. That’s what killed her, not cancer.”
More than anything, I wanted to call him a lying motherfucker. I wanted to accuse him of fabricating that
