the footage in to the department,” I said. “We were fired two weeks later.”
“Did they take back the money Malone stole?”
“The department wanted to keep it quiet,” I said. “Keep it away from the press. A story about dirty cops in Boston would have been front-page news for a month. They asked Malone where the cash was, but he clammed up. He was fired anyway, and he knew they wouldn’t prosecute him. Pilkos wouldn’t press charges on the beating. There was a search of Malone’s place for the cash, but nothing was found.”
“Why did he take it?”
“He said back then it was because he was in debt,” I said. “I knew he’d bought his apartment at the wrong time, and the market downturn had left him in trouble. But tonight he told me that he came up with the plan just after his diagnosis. He wanted to get experimental treatments that insurance wouldn’t pay for. He gave twenty years to the city and he wanted something back. I mean, I understand where he was coming from. That money would have been used for a good cause. Who knows what Pilkos was planning to do with it?”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. It seemed, for a moment, that Susan could read my mind. That in the closeness of the car, she might have sensed my secret, the cash under my bed. When she spoke, it was a relief.
“You didn’t try explaining what had happened to the commissioner?” Susan asked. “Telling her why you got involved?”
“There was nothing to explain,” I said. “I was guilty. I’d robbed and beaten a man. Just because I thought what I was doing was right didn’t excuse it. And turning Malone in would have been serving my best friend up on a platter.” I looked at her. She was watching me, her eyes dark and thoughtful. “Whatever wrong I’ve done in the world, I’d never turn in a friend.”
“Has he apologized?” Susan asked. “I mean, I don’t want to be judgmental. I don’t know what was going on in this man’s life. But you were his partner. He betrayed you.”
“What can the guy do? He can’t take it back.”
“Well, he owes you,” she said, sitting up in her seat. “Bigtime.”
I drove in silence, thinking about Susan’s words. After a while, I began to pick out a familiar stretch of road from the darkness, the trees and hedges that I knew led me past somewhere I did not want to go. I spotted the house in the distance and saw that a light was on in one of the windows.
I made the decision and latched onto it, afraid that if I questioned it at all, I would change my mind.
“What are we doing?” Susan asked as I pulled the car over outside my wife’s killer’s house.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
CLINE LIKED A purge night, liked to get all his business taken care of in one hit, before his targets could scatter like roaches from a kitchen light. The first time he’d cleaned house, he’d wiped out his whole crew only weeks after assembling them. He’d found out he had a rat in his pack when a cop had dragged him in and told him about it; the cop wanted half Cline’s stash for the favor. Cline had called the crew in, told them there was a last-minute job on, and driven them to a field in a big van. Then he’d turned around in the driver’s seat and said nothing while he sprayed them all with an automatic like fucking Tony Montana. Made them dance in their seats. He’d sat in the field afterward and watched the van burn, the coiling smoke and embers rising into the night. He’d felt pure.
Now he closed the door of the Escalade quietly, put his gloved hands in the pockets of his coat, and counted off the street lamps as he walked toward Addison Gilbert Hospital’s parking lot. He pulled his cap down low on his brow as he crossed the lot and opened the back door that Dr. Raymond Locke had left unlatched for him.
There’d be no playing around with Russ the way there had been with Simbo. He’d knelt by Simbo’s body after the thrashing stopped and looked at the red starbursts in the whites of his eyes, the colors still leaking in the last stutters of his heart. Cline walked the halls of Addison Gilbert and took the stairs to the second floor, following the scrape marks in the paint of