I didn’t answer him.
“Your name again?”
“Alex McKnight.”
“Apparently, Bruce couldn’t close the deal with you,” he said, shaking his head. “Yet another disappointment. What a team those two make.”
“I have another name for you.”
“Another name?”
“Natalie Reynaud.”
“Who would that be?”
“That’s the woman who was killed in my cabin last night.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”
“I have good reason to think you were responsible.”
“Why would you think I had something to do with that?”
“You wanted me dead,” I said. “If you found out I was still alive…”
“You think that would concern me? I didn’t want you dead per se, Mr. McKnight. I just wanted you gone. There was nothing personal involved.”
“You’re a killer. You’re a criminal who gets rid of people without a second thought.”
Gray looked up at the man standing behind me. I was expecting to feel his hands around my neck, or the gun pressed to the back of my head. It didn’t happen.
“A man can be many things,” Gray said. “A soccer fan. A father…”
“A gangster. A drug lord.”
He gave me a little smile. Not a warm one. “Is that what you think I do? You think I sell crack to kids in Detroit?”
“You’re not out on the corner yourself, no.”
“I make my living in imports and exports, Mr. McKnight. Imports and exports. I’m a businessman.”
“Uh-huh. What kind of ‘import’ are your men up north working on?”
“They’re not my men anymore. I can assure you of that. But let me ask you, do you know the difference between an illegal drug and a prescribed medicine?”
I thought about it, what the right answer would be. “A doctor, for one thing.”
“Yes. A doctor tells you to take the prescribed medicine. He gives you permission to take it.”
“Meaning what?”
“Have you ever seen somebody die a slow, painful death?”
I didn’t have to go far for that one. The darkest year of my childhood, watching my mother die. “Yes,” I said. “I have.”
“Have you seen someone lose their very sanity because of the pain they’re in?”
“Let me guess. That’s where you come in. You sell pills to people who need them. I bet you don’t even make a profit.”
Gray looked up at the man behind me again. “What do you make of our Mr. McKnight?”
The man didn’t say anything. If he made some kind of gesture, like a shrug of his huge shoulders, I couldn’t see it.
“When we last met,” he said, “how come you didn’t tell me I owed you a great debt?”
“I wasn’t aware you did.”
“You saved my son’s life.”
“I helped get him off the boat. That’s all.”
“You’re being modest. Harold was knocked out cold. He would have drowned.”
“I did what I could at the time. I wasn’t the only one.”
“You’re not making this very easy,” he said. He leaned forward in his chair and put his hands together in front of him. “It’s generally not in my nature to be forgiving. Aside from which, it’s usually bad for business.”
“Did you send somebody to my cabin or not?”
“If I did?”
“Then I kill you,” I said. “Or I die trying.”
He tapped his fingertips together. “First of all, and please understand this…If I had indeed sent someone to your cabin, I would have sent him to kill you, not this woman you speak of, who I’m sure I’ve never even laid eyes on. And second, if I sent someone, you wouldn’t be here right now talking to me. You would be in the ground. Are we clear on those two points?”
“We’re clear.”
“This woman,” he said. “She was close to you?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “If Cap did this on his own…”
“He didn’t.”
“You’re sure about that.”
“I don’t believe he knew I was alive.”
“You think you’d know if he was lying.”
“I don’t think you can fake an immediate reaction like that. He was surprised that I was alive.”
“Okay, so you trust your gut on that one. I’m with you so far. But what did he say after that?”
“I don’t remember every word. The bottom line was that if you found out I was still alive, you’d send somebody else. And if that person found Natalie instead of me in my cabin…”
“You believed that?”
“I had no reason not to.”
“At some point, did he actually suggest that you come down here and kill me?”
“He didn’t have to,” I said. Although I was beginning to see the point. Shoot him in the head, he had told me. Don’t wait for him to say a word. Just shoot him in the head.
“Look at it from his point of view. What’s his biggest problem in the world right now?”
“That would probably be you.”
“I assure you, you can eliminate the word ‘probably.’”
“He told me which door to come in.”
“There you go. You wanted to believe it was me. So you did. Cap played you like a harp, Mr. McKnight.”
“Or else you’re the one playing me right now.”
“I think it’s time for you to use your gut again,” he said. “Now that you’re sitting here, who do you believe?”
I looked him in the eye. We both sat there for a long time. The television cast a an eerie green glow over everything in the room.
“If you did it,” I said, “then you wouldn’t be having this conversation with me. You’d just have your man here kill me and be done with it.”
“Actually, Mr. Stone doesn’t do that kind of housekeeping for me. But yes, aside from that, you’re exactly right. So what should we do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“My daughter got married two days ago. We had three hundred people here.”
If I was supposed to congratulate him, I missed the opportunity. I kept quiet.
“It was a beautiful day. Two days ago. You’re telling me that the very next day, yesterday…someone took this woman from you.”
“Yes.”
“You loved her.”
“Yes.”
“Enough to do this, to come here. The very day after she died.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. McKnight. That’s all I can say. I know it’s not much.”
It was a strange thing to hear from him, this man who would next have to decide if I’d get a bullet in the
