anything to mitigate the facts in his file — a cop participating in a mercy killing. A cop! Help me out, Chief Truman, help me understand. I came up here myself hoping you could tell me something, hoping you could change my mind. If you weren’t a cop, then maybe, maybe…
I told him I had nothing to say, he’d wasted a trip. It was a family matter anyway.
You know, Bob Danziger told me, it’s first-degree murder, you understand that? The intent is there, the whole thing was planned. I’ve tried to worry it down to second-degree or manslaughter, but I can’t see a way. The facts just don’t fit. With one hand, he worked the skin around his eyes. There were red freckles on the backs of his fingers. Sometimes, he said, this job is just too much.
A few hours later Danziger was gone.
And here was my father, a thread of Danziger’s blood caught in his hair. He said, ‘I couldn’t let them take you, Ben. Not you and Annie both. I just couldn’t let him do it. When I heard, I just-’
He said, ‘What do we do?’
I hesitated.
What was I going to do? What was a son and policeman supposed to do?
I hesitated — then, in a moment, it was decided. ‘Where’s the gun, Dad?’
‘I dropped it.’
‘Where?’
‘The cabin.’
‘Dad, we have to go get it. Right now, you hear me?’
I do not excuse my actions, and I certainly do not excuse my father’s. I simply did not have the strength — of will, of emotion, of character — to erase my family completely. My mother was dead, now a man named Danziger was dead too. I tried to stop the chain of suffering there.
We went to the cabin, retrieved Dad’s gun, and locked the place up.
And we waited.
An hour became a day became a week.
I went back to the cabin again and again. I pored over the body. I read Danziger’s files and discovered the pattern of kill shots used by the Mission Posse: a gunshot to the eye, just as my father had shot Danziger. It was a fateful convergence. I tweaked the scene, made it look like a gang murder. I burned the file on my mother’s death. To delay the discovery of the body and destroy the papers that now bore my fingerprints, I ran Danziger’s Honda into the lake one night after dark.
Then I closed the cabin and waited. It took only a week before Dad started sneaking a drink here and there. Still I waited, unsure, needing someone else to find the body so I would have no link to its discovery; at the same time hoping the body would never be found, hoping its decay would inexorably destroy Dad’s connection to it — and mine. When it seemed I could wait no longer — when my own paranoia and Dad’s unraveling seemed to limit the time we had available — I ‘discovered’ the corpse.
As a student of history, I should have known better. Any historian will tell you: There is no end to any chain of events, ever. There is no cause without an effect, no incident without its sequel. I tried to break this chain of suffering, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t prevent my father’s pain. I could only deflect it onto others.
The hillsides across the lake, mossed over with pines, were darkly illuminated.
Gittens said, ‘We went to a place like this once, in New Hampshire, when I was a kid. Cabin by a lake, my whole family. I remember there was this girl in one of the other cabins. She was about my age, pretty little blond girl in a blue bathing suit. She used to do gymnastics on the beach. She had this springy way of walking, like any moment she was going to jump into one of those tumbling runs.’ He looked out at the water. ‘You know, I never said a word to that girl.’
I could barely listen. I had a sense of myself crumpling — of some interior structure finally buckling and collapsing. It was not fear; fear already seemed irrelevant, the time for it long past. The feeling was more like exhaustion. Acceptance. Surrender.
It must have registered on my face, or maybe Gittens, with his instinct for weakness, just sensed it. He said, ‘Stay cool, Ben. Think.’
‘What do you want, Gittens?’
He regarded me, then reached into my coat and patted my chest, sides, and back for a wire.
The rain, until now a mist suspended in the air, began to fall again. It ticked in the bare trees.
‘What’s your next move here, Ben?’
I did not respond.
‘Did you leave yourself a way out? An exit strategy?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking ab-’
‘Oh come on, Ben, stop! We’re too smart for that!’
‘What’s your way out? What’s your exit strategy?’
‘Don’t need one.’
‘No? Franny Boyle is going to testify you killed Fasulo and Trudell.’
‘Franny’s credibility is nonexistent. Lowery won’t indict anything with Franny as the only witness. Besides, all Franny has is hearsay — rumors whispered in his ear by dead people. None of it’s admissible. There’s no case against me, no proof. You’re a smart guy, Ben. Come on now, you’ve got to think.’
But there were no thoughts. There was no exit, no future. Only the past.
‘I can help you, Ben, if you just let me. Cops help each other. Let me help you.’
‘Help me how?’
‘Ben, without me, there’s no proof. I’m the one your old man confessed to, I’m the only one who knows that gun in your hand is the murder weapon. If I keep my mouth shut, there’s no case against your old man. Or you.’
‘What happens to the Danziger case? They’ll need someone for it.’
‘Braxton,’ Gittens said.
‘They’ll never buy it. Danziger had given him a deal.’
‘They’ll buy what I sell them. Especially if you back me up, if we work together.’
‘But…’ My voice trailed off.
‘Let Braxton take the hit, Ben, for all of it. He’s got it coming to him. He’s hurt enough people in his time. This just evens the score. Braxton’s not with the good guys, Ben. We’re the good guys. Remember that. Let me talk with him. He’ll confess to both-’
‘Confess? He didn’t do anyth-’
‘He’ll confess! He’ll confess, then he’ll attack me just the way he attacked you last week. He’ll grab my gun and it’ll go off.’
‘It’s murder.’
‘No, it’s the right thing. We’ve got to do what’s necessary, Ben.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’
‘You don’t have to do anything. Just let me do the heavy lifting.’
I couldn’t answer.
‘Ben, there’s no other way. If I walk out of here, your old man does life without parole. They’ll whack you, too, for obstruction. Let me help you. You’re not thinking straight right now.’
I heard myself say, ‘What do you get out of it, Gittens?’
He shrugged.
‘You get rid of Braxton,’ I said. ‘He’s the only one left who can hurt you. That’s why Danziger wanted him so badly. You tipped Braxton off that night. He’s the witness who can put you behind that red door.’
With a nod, Gittens asked for the. 38 in my hand. I gave it to him, my thoughts dreamy and slow.
‘Ben, what I’m offering you here is the only way out. Take it.’
I stared out over the lake, with its lunar phosphorescence and dark rim of hills.
‘Take it,’ Gittens urged.
I shook my head no.
Gittens let out a frustrated sigh. ‘Don’t do this, Ben. It’s what you do after checkmate that matters. We have to trust each other.’
‘Is that what you told Artie Trudell?’
