"They'd know what?"
"That she was going to tell on us, so I had to kill her. It was a, a symbol. So they'd know I was protecting all of us."
"They being Gavin and Wechsler?"
"'Course."
Susan looked at me.
"What did you use?" I said.
"My jackknife. My father always said a man was no better than the knife he carried. I always carry a good jackknife."
"And what did you do with it?"
"With what?"
"The tongue," I said.
"The thing in the sink, you know" He made a grinding noise.
"Disposal," Susan said.
"Yuh, disposal." He gestured down, with his forefinger.
Susan stared at him for a moment with no expression on her face, then she turned and walked back and stood next to me. The counter was between Sterling and us. He looked a little dazed.
"What was I supposed to do," he said. "Everybody I turn to lets me down."
Susan took a deep breath and let it out and walked to the end of the counter and picked up the phone.
"No," Sterling said.
He put his right hand behind him, feeling for the gun in his back pocket. I brought mine up from beside my thigh and aimed it at the middle of his chest.
"Try to use the gun and I'll kill you," I said.
Sterling froze in mid gesture. He looked at Susan.
"Take the gun out slowly, hold it with your thumb and forefinger only, and put it on the counter in front of me. And step back away from it."
The thing in behind his eyes was seething now. He didn't want to give up the gun. He wanted to kill both of us and everyone else who wouldn't help him. But the thing didn't make him blind. Maybe he saw something in my eyes. Maybe he knew that shooting him would satisfy me in ways that few things could. Slowly and carefully he took the gun out and put it on the counter. It was a Targa.380. He still seemed dazed. I picked the gun up and stuck it in my belt.
"Susie," he said. "For God's sake, Susie."
Susan dialed 911.
"I'm not going to stay here," he said. "You can shoot me if you want."
I shook my head. And he turned and walked from the kitchen. I followed him. He went through the living room to the hall and out the apartment door, down the stairway, and out the front door of the building. The door swung shut and latched gently behind him. From the front hall window I watched him run in the late afternoon sunshine under
the filtering trees, up Linnaean Street toward Mass Ave.
Susan came to stand beside me. She put her forehead against the wall beside the window and closed her eyes.
"My God," she said. "My God."
I stood beside her without touching her, and we stood like that until the cops came.
chapter forty-nine
SUSAN AND I sat across from each other in her kitchen with a bottle of Irish whisky on the counter between us and no lights on. Pearl had been liberated from the office and tended to, and was lying on the couch in the living room. The cops were gone. The sun was down, and the early evening had taken on a bluish tint outside the kitchen windows.
"What will happen to him?" Susan said.
"Brad? They'll catch him."
"You seem so sure."
"He's too dumb," I said. "He won't last long."
"Can they prove he did what you said he did?"
"Well, they've got his gun. It should match up with the slugs they took out of Cony Brown and Carla."
"How awful the tongue especially."
"I know," I said. "Funny thing. It was supposed to reassure Gavin and Wechsler. I don't think Wechsler even noticed it had happened. This was mostly Gavin and Brad, I think. But Gavin took it as a threat. You know, keep quiet or this will happen to you. He was walking around with bodyguards."
"You don't think Wechsler was involved?"
"He was involved," I said, "but basically just to have his money laundered. I don't think he even knew the mechanics."
"Because of the way he acted when you confronted him?"
"Yes."
"And you trust your instincts?"
"Have to," I said. "Most of the actually important clues in this business are really how people are. If you can't read human behavior pretty good after a while, you never get very good at this."
"But human behavior doesn't get you a conviction. You have to have hard evidence."
"True," I said. "But the behavior tells you where to look, or, sometimes, what to manufacture."
"Manufacture?"
"Cops do it. I'm not saying it's right, but they know somebody did a thing and can't prove it, so they manufacture something that will prove it."
"If they catch Brad, do you think he'll implicate Gavin and Wechsler?"
"You saw him tonight. He'd implicate his mother," I said.
"And if they don't catch him? Can you prove anything against the other two?"
I smiled. It was my moment. I took a small blue computer disk out of my shirt pocket and held it up.
"It was in your bedroom, under some sweaters," I said. "I knew he'd have it with him, and if he didn't have it in his pocket, it had to be here someplace."
"When did you find it?"
"While you were freeing Pearl from the office," I said.
"And you didn't give it to the police?"
"I want to look at it first," I said. "If it's what I think it is, I'll give it to them tomorrow."