again. Truth made for a good parting gift. ‘My confession. Of murdering my best friend.’
The expression on her face didn’t change. ‘Your best friend…’
‘Yeah. Since I was three years old.’
‘Self-defense. You have nothing to confess.’
He closed his eyes.
‘It’s not your fault, Miles.’
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘Do you really know that, in your head, your guts, your heart? Do you?’ she asked.
Andy stood on the far wall, arms crossed, blood on his shoulder, on his throat. Three bullet wounds glistened in the lamplight.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she repeated. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘He told me I killed him with a word. Then I remembered. On the drive. Talking with Groote about the FBI. How I killed him.’
‘Is Andy here now?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Ask him,’ she said, ‘what he wants. Why does he stay?’
‘He’s not a ghost seeking vengeance,’ Miles said. ‘My head invented him.’
‘Then your head’s trying to tell you information you need to know.’
Miles said, ‘What do you want, Andy?’ He didn’t feel embarrassed or stupid, talking to Andy with Celeste in the room.
Andy put his hands over two of the wounds. ‘I want you to know what you did, Miles. I want you to know what you didn’t do.’
Miles repeated the words to Celeste. She frowned. ‘Show me the confession.’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s my burden to carry.’
‘I’m not offering to carry Andy for you. Just let me see what you remember.’
‘And reading it will, what, make you respect me?’ Thirty seconds of silence passed. ‘I killed my best friend. What kind of person am
I?’
‘I didn’t save my husband. I locked myself in a house for a year. What kind of person am I, Miles?’ She sat up from the bed. She held out her hand. ‘Give me the confession. I can handle it.’
He sat up, pulled the paper from his jacket, handed it to her. She unfolded it and began to read:
Allison:
I killed my best friend. I was working with my dad in Miami – he owned a private investigations firm. Dad died (cancer) and my friend Andy was an accountant for what I believed was an insurance company but the firm was a financial front for the Barrada crime family. Dad lost three hundred thousand on gambling and he owed the money through a Barrada bookie. When he died – I owed the debt. The Barradas threatened to take Dad’s firm, which was all Dad left me, but Andy got me a deal; he told me that I could work it off by doing clandestine work for the Barradas. Andy wanted financial and logistical information on other crime rings: spreadsheets, payments, dealer networks, information on shipments into the country.
I wasn’t a hit man or an enforcer. I was their personal spy and Andy gently told me that if I refused, the Barradas would kill me and he would not be able to stop them. He wept as he told me and I believed him. He was giving me a way out. The Barradas had me conduct eleven covert jobs against their competitors and I succeeded in every one of them. I believed the debt was paid. But they made it clear I couldn’t walk away.
I approached the FBI in Miami. I told them I would testify about the Barradas’ spying on the other crime rings if they would provide immunity to me – and to Andy. He saved my ass, so I was saving his. But Andy couldn’t know, they told me, his loyalty to the Barradas ran too deep. He was engaged to a Barrada cousin, who owned the insurance front. I would have to get information on Andy, leverage over him, so that he couldn’t run back to the Barradas, give him no choice but to cooperate. I had to eliminate loyalty as a choice for him.
I set up a meeting with Andy in a Barrada warehouse. The FBI gave me falsified data I could claim to have stolen from the Duarte crime ring, a group in Los Angeles wanting to expand and make alliances in south Florida. I had already lifted some minor stuff from them but this faked FBI info was designed to make Andy drool: names of dealers under their control, bank-account numbers, people on their payroll. I was to take two FBI undercover agents with me. The undercovers pretended to be guys I had recruited to be my operatives and they planned to record what Andy said about the spying operation and then immediately make the offer to him of immunity. Because I couldn’t do it alone, and Andy might have to be physically handled. I told the FBI I couldn’t turn without Andy. He might not want to believe it, but the Barradas would blame him for my betrayal, for bringing me into their camp and me selling them to the feds. They’d kill him, I was sure.
This was the only way to save Andy.
We’re at the warehouse and this is all I remember: I introduce Andy to the guys and we’re talking, we’re showing him the data, I say I can get more on the Duartes but it’s going to involve a substantial operation – the sting I have in mind for them, I can’t do it alone, I need the two guys with me. I ask Andy, real specifically what kind of data he wants me to steal from the Duartes, and he’s talking up a beauty, feeding everything into the tapes that the FBI needs, to put on the real pressure, and he asks me when can you get started and then it’s all a blank then I see him pull a gun from under his shirt. Aims it at one of the feds’ head and I’ve got my gun and I never use a gun much but I shoot because I can’t let him shoot a man in the head.
My bullet hits his shoulder as he shoots at me and hits my chest and we both scream and fall and I raise the gun at him again then it’s all a blank again
The next time I’m aware of what’s going on I’m in a safe house in Jacksonville, and they’re offering me the witness protection program and my best friend, my brother for all intents and purposes, is dead and I don’t know what I did wrong, why I killed him.
Celeste folded the paper.
‘You remembered something else,’ she said quietly.
‘Yes. The first blank. When Andy asked me when I could get started.’ He stopped. ‘Groote and I were talking about the FBI and when they would start naming me in the news – it brought it back, clear as day. But…’
‘Don’t shy away from it,’ she said.
‘He asked me when me and the guys could get started on the project and I said, They’ll do it as soon as we turn off the tape.’
‘You let him know he was being taped.’
‘I said… yes, for that reason, but for a joke, to try and soften the blow. We all laughed. Even Andy. But then he saw my eyes, he panicked, he realized it was a bust and he pulled his gun, aimed it at the undercover’s head… If I’d kept my mouth shut, told him a different way…’
She took his hands in hers. ‘There’s no good way to tell him, is there?’
Miles shook his head.
She gripped his hands tightly. ‘But Andy drew the gun. He chose to fight. You saved a life, two lives, your own. You and I both saved lives, wow, we’re in a special club.’ Her voice broke and tears came to her eyes. ‘If God keeps a ledger, don’t you think our accounts are balanced?’
‘I… shot to wound him, not to kill him. I still don’t remember the details.’
‘He shot you in the chest. Did he show you the same consideration?’
Miles opened his mouth to speak, then shut it.
‘I handled it wrong. He panicked.’
‘Did he expect you to work for the mob forever when you were strong-armed into service? I don’t care if you knew him from when you were in diapers, he’s a horrible friend.’
Miles released her hands. ‘So what does Andy want to tell me, that he’s sorry? He never offers an apology.
