Payback, p.25
Payback, page 25
“Why didn’t you answer my texts?” I demanded.
My abrupt greeting startled him. He almost fell off his seat, had to grab on to the bar to keep from falling.
“Jesus, Kate! Don’t sneak up on me. You’ve always done that, since we were kids. I hate it, it’s nerve-racking.”
I pulled my phone out, hit the tracking app he’d begged me to install. “Look. You’re the one who made me get this location app. Now it says you cut me off.”
I hit the app, swiped his name, then held it up to Leo’s face. “No location found? What’s up with that? Maybe I’ll delete the damn thing.”
“Whatever,” he said.
That surprised me. I expected him to plead with me to keep it.
Leo wasn’t even looking at me. He was waving the bartender down. “Tito’s on the rocks, Liam!” When the bartender acknowledged the order with a nod, Leo turned his attention back to me. “I’m over that tracking app. Sometimes a person has to protect his privacy.”
It felt like a body snatcher had taken possession of my brother, because I was talking to someone new. “Did you come down here to find me?”
“No! I didn’t expect to see you. I’m meeting a friend.”
“A friend? Here at Craftsman? In Morningside Heights. Leo, you live and work in New Jersey.”
Unruffled, he said, “Well, my support group meets in Manhattan. And we’ve been coming here on jazz nights. It’s worth the commute.”
I slid onto the barstool beside him. “Hey, I ran into Bill. We’re meeting up later. He said some of the people in that support group are really bad news. He’s backed away from it, and he thinks you should, too.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
I was about to ask him why when the rumble of the train gave out a warning. I covered my ears just as it rushed overhead, making the bottles shake in the bar. The Craftsman was located right where the subway rose out of the ground and became an elevated train that ran right over Broadway.
When the train passed, I doubled down on the sisterly advice. “Some groups can be toxic, depends on the personalities. Remember what I got myself into? We both landed in the hospital because of those crazed vigilantes. Jeez, Leo, I’m still not rid of them. I think you should listen to Bill.”
Leo sighed with regret. “Kate, this isn’t anything like your experience. Sorry the group didn’t work out for Bill but I’m sticking with it. The talk therapy is really valuable. They’re helping me with my social anxiety. Even my test anxiety. That’s going to be incredibly helpful with the bar exam coming up.”
My phone pinged. I looked at the screen. Mom was calling. It was uncanny, like she was a mind reader.
As I swiped the screen, Leo grabbed my hand and whispered, “Don’t!”
Too late.
Even without speaker, my Mom’s voice blared into the bar. “Kate! Do you have any idea where Leo could be? He didn’t come home after work.”
He cringed, squeezing his eyes shut. My heart tugged at the sight, and I considered lying to her.
Changed my mind. Leo needed to get out of Craftsman and return to New Jersey. “He’s sitting right here with me, Mom. We’re at a bar in my neighborhood.”
Leo shook his head in a desperate plea, whispering the word, “Nooooo!”
“What the hell is he doing there? He’s supposed to be studying for the bar!”
“He knows that. He’s getting on it, he told me.”
She almost blew up the cell phone with righteous indignation. “He’s not going to pass the bar if he spends his evenings drinking cocktails. Leo? Do you hear me?”
I held the phone to my ear. People were looking at us. And it was New York. “He can’t hear you, Mom.”
“Put him on. I want to talk to him.”
He stumbled off the stool and backed away, like he was going to make a run for it. I waved him back.
“He can’t talk right now. He’s in the restroom.”
He sat back down, slumping over the bar with relief. He picked up the vodka and downed it.
“Mom, I’ll keep an eye out for him. He knows he needs to work on the bar exam. I’ll send him your way.”
“You better. I don’t want to drive to Morningside Heights and drag him out of there.”
Good God, not that. I pumped a measure of reassurance into my voice. “Not necessary, Mom, I promise. I’ll take care of it. He’ll be home soon.”
When I ended the call, he was defeated, all the upbeat confidence sucked out of him.
“I’m just gonna fail it again,” he said. “I don’t know why she expects a different result. It’s the same old thing over and over again.”
He hunched over his glass, with his elbows on the bar. Tipped up his cocktail glass and crunched an ice cube.
The sight sent a jolt of remorse through me. Hell, I’d passed the New York bar without difficulty. I needed to exert myself to help Leo; I’d never even offered to assist him. By the time he was studying, I was already in the DA’s office, too busy to lend a hand.
I wasn’t so busy now. My only client had opted for a self-help method to get out of jail. It seemed like I could take some time to tutor my only sibling.
“Hey, Leo. Let’s start reviewing the New Jersey bar materials together.”
He shrugged. “You don’t need to bother. It won’t help. Just a waste of time.”
“Not a waste of my time. Maybe I want to prep for the New Jersey exam. If I start now, I’ll be ahead of the game when the next exam comes around.”
He looked up, with puppy dog eyes. “You serious? You want to do that?”
“Hell yes. We’ll start tomorrow. I promise.”
He nodded, looking less wretched. “Mom doesn’t believe in my competence. At all. The thing about this friend of mine in group? She believes in me.”
She? That sparked my curiosity. “Is she someone you’re interested in? Romantically, I mean?”
He pulled a face. “God, no. She’s older. More like a much older sister. Or a youngish aunt.”
The bartender stepped over. “Another round?”
Leo glanced at me, like he was asking permission. Suddenly I felt like the youngish aunt. “Sure, one more. Then you’re heading out, okay? Promise?”
He nodded, restored to good humor. As I paid the tab, I thought about Leo’s new friendship. Any normal person would encourage it. He needed all the support he could get.
But the idea of a substitute sister rubbed me wrong. Leo already had a big sister.
Who was trying to replace me?
Chapter 51
By eight o’clock, it felt like the longest day of my life. A day that had stretched far beyond twenty-four hours, into infinity.
And I was sick of the Craftsman, weary of killing time while everyone around me was having fun. After I persuaded Leo to leave, it was barely six o’clock. I still had to wait around for my eight o’clock meeting with Bill. While I nursed a single warm beer for two hours, I texted him repeatedly, asking whether we could push up our meeting time. He didn’t answer.
I watched the crowd for a while, trying to pick out the woman Leo had come to meet up with. But there were no women sitting alone, other than me. Women arrived in groups of two or three, and the ones who walked through the door alone joined other parties who were already seated. After a while, I gave up and played with my phone, reading the social media posts touting Zagcoin. Someone had made a rap about the Zagcoin crypto credit card on YouTube. It was pretty entertaining, frankly. If I didn’t know better, it would pique my interest in the investment.
But I had the hot skinny, the inside dope. And if it was up to Devon, it might never see the light of day.
By eight o’clock, the jazz band had set up and was starting to play. Edgy and impatient, I decided to step outside for a minute. The bartender was a smoker; he regularly stood by the street with a cigarette when he was on break. I swapped a dollar bill for one of his smokes, borrowed his lighter.
“If you don’t return my lighter, I’ll come looking for you, Kate.”
He wasn’t kidding. I’d had to beg for the use of it.
“I’ll have it back in five minutes. Cross my heart.”
“You better,” he said, giving me a stern look of warning.
I stepped outside the door and lit up. The area outside Craftsman was crowded with outdoor seating they’d set up during the pandemic and kept going ever since. When I blew out a cloud of smoke, the people seated nearby gave me the stink eye.
A woman said, “Can you move along? There’s a smoking ordinance.”
She was right. When I wasn’t personally partaking of the vice, I’d been known to bitch at smokers who got too close. To put distance between us, I walked down the sidewalk and stood right on the curb, by the roadway.
It didn’t satisfy her. She stood up at the table and raised her voice. “Smoking is not allowed in outdoor dining areas. It’s the law!”
Jesus. She was taking all the joy out of the tobacco experience.
The outdoor seating extended into the roadway, across from the elevated train. I skirted it, taking refuge at the far corner of the designated space. I didn’t want to subject anyone to secondhand smoke. But if I stepped any farther into the street, I’d be standing in the midst of traffic, a target for a passing car.
When I took another hit, the woman appeared beside me. “You’re violating city law! Put it out!”
At that point, it would have been the safest course to toss the damned thing onto the pavement and go back inside. But she was making me angry. Not so mad that I wanted to throw down; a smoke wasn’t worth fighting over. But I couldn’t let her win, I was too stubborn for that. She didn’t have the right to order me around.
I watched for a lull in the street traffic—and darted across two lanes, to stand under the steel railway of the elevated train. Drivers had parked their cars under the structure. I leaned against the back end of a silver Subaru sedan and sucked on the filter. The cigarette had gone out, so I fired up the borrowed lighter and relit it. While I took a hit, I kept my eyes on the sidewalk by Craftsman, hoping to see Bill walk by.
I checked my phone: 8:13. That was out of character. Bill was a stickler for punctuality—even in the city, where people habitually run late. And he hadn’t called, hadn’t texted. For a moment, I wondered whether he was ghosting me—but disregarded the notion. That wasn’t possible. Not Bill.
From a distance, I heard the rumble of the approaching train. It would be passing directly overhead in a minute. I dropped the cigarette onto the pavement, so that I could cover my ears. I hate the noise of the train, especially in the weeks since one literally ran right over me.
As it rushed over, sending vibrations down my spine, I gritted my teeth and waited for it to pass. When it ran on down the tracks, the pounding noise eased up, but I kept my ears covered until it was gone.
Right after I dropped my hands, the screaming started. The sound came from a man standing under the railway, about three parked car-lengths away from me. His mouth was wide open as he shrieked, waving his arms and pointing to the ground.
Most of the diners across the way didn’t react. They continued to drink, to talk. A couple of people shot suspicious glances in his direction.
I stepped closer to Broadway, with an eye on the traffic. If some guy was losing it under the elevated railway, I preferred to be back safely on the sidewalk. But he caught sight of me, pointed his key fob in my direction.
He screamed at me. “Police! Call the police!”
That made me pause. If he genuinely needed assistance, I didn’t want to run the other way. My dad taught me that I needed to be street savvy, but that I shouldn’t turn a blind eye to another person’s plight.
So I edged close, to see if I could discern what the emergency was. When he saw me approach, he waved his hand at the railway over his head.
He wailed, “It fell off! Rolled right by my car!”
He tried to say more, but hysteria garbled his speech. Still cautious, I came closer—though I was prepared to turn and run, if the situation required it.
I called out, “Are you hurt?”
He shook his hand wildly, grimacing. “It fell down. He’s dead!”
When I saw it, I couldn’t understand, not at first. My brain refused to make sense of it. And once I realized what I was seeing, the horror made me back away, until I stumbled onto Broadway.
A car veered by, narrowly missing me. I felt the brush of the metal fender swiping my thigh. I ran back under the railway, to the screaming man. He clutched my arm as we stood together by the grisly sight.
It was a head. A human head.
And I was pretty sure it used to belong to Bill.
Chapter 52
I sat on the pavement under the railway, with my back against the steel column supporting the elevated subway lines over my head. It was a perilous resting place—or it would have been, anyway, had all traffic not been cut off by the cluster of emergency vehicles.
The rotating lights from the beacons and light bars of the emergency vehicles assaulted my vision, but I refused to close my eyes or cover them. I preferred the blinding glare of red and white and blue to the image that was stuck in my mind’s eye, waiting to pop up into memory like a scene from a slasher film.
Because it had been Bill’s head that dropped from the tracks to the pavement, rolling like a cue ball when it hit the ground. I’d been the one to make the 911 call. The shrieking man who first encountered Bill had fainted after losing his shit—and I couldn’t fault him for it. It felt like it took forever for the police to respond, but that was probably because time was suspended for me.
NYPD arrived first; when they saw Bill’s severed head, the sirens cried out a symphony as vehicles rolled in from all directions. New York Fire Department, more police, two ambulances. When the second ambulance arrived on the scene, I tried to make sense of it. Were they planning to convey the head in one vehicle? And the body in another?
Because the police found Bill’s body on the tracks of the elevated line. They concluded that his body had been resting on the tracks. He was decapitated when the train hit him, and the momentum sent Bill’s head rolling off the tracks, where it fell to the pavement below.
His body was recovered on the tracks almost directly across from the entrance of Craftsman. None of the outside diners provided any assistance to law enforcement. By contrast, I was a gold mine of information for the cops who responded. Not only could I confirm the identity of the deceased, but I was also the person he’d agreed to meet at the bar at eight o’clock.
When the cop took my statement, he didn’t volunteer any information about the condition of the body. He asked me to explain why Bill had been sitting like that, right by the tracks. He wanted to know whether he was depressed, whether he’d experienced a tragedy or disappointment.
I insisted that foul play was involved, that he wasn’t suicidal. But when he doubled down, I had to admit he’d been troubled. That he suffered from anxiety and took medication to control it. I told the officer he’d felt like he’d made some bad associations, that he was being followed.
The cop’s forehead furrowed. “Who was following him?”
“He didn’t say who it was.”
I was debating. Should I tell the cop that he got involved with a crazy support group? He’d probably think I was nuts. I was pondering the right way to broach it when the cop asked, “Did he tend to be paranoid? See things that weren’t there?”
The question hit me wrong. I flipped out, lit into the cop with an angry outburst fueled by fury and grief. Another officer dragged me back, sat me down by the steel column and told me to shut up and stay put.
So I did. I’m a law-abiding citizen. Basically.
I reclined against the column and tipped my head back, staring at the structure above. The change of focus gave my eyes a rest from the LED lights.
Someone squatted down beside me. I didn’t look his way. If he had a question, he’d let me know.
“Hey, Kate Stone,” he said.
Wearily, I pulled my head away from the steel resting place and met his eye. He wasn’t in uniform, wasn’t one of the cops who’d been interrogating me. But his face was familiar.
He was the cop from the graveyard at St. Paul’s. The one who had carried me back to Rubenstein’s press conference. Jankovich.
I said the first thing that came to mind. “This isn’t your precinct.”
“No,” he said. “It’s my neighborhood. I live a couple blocks from here, on Broadway.”
I tried to process the information, but my head wasn’t working. So I didn’t say anything.
He cleared his throat. “I was out for a drink, one of my friends got word about the suicide.”
“It wasn’t a suicide,” I said automatically. I’d spoken those words dozens of times in the years since my dad’s death, denying the purported cause of death.
“You think? Anyway, I was talking to one of the guys who responded, heard your name. At first, I thought it must be a coincidence. Not the same Kate Stone. But it’s really you.”
The statement made me sad. It sounded tragic. I repeated it. “It’s really me.”
“I thought I’d come over here, make sure you’re okay. See what you’ve gotten yourself into this time.”
The EMT workers passed us, right then. I saw two stretchers roll by. One had a large black bag strapped onto the cot. The second ambulance stretcher carried a smaller burden.
My chest tightened; I couldn’t breathe. The cop from the graveyard grabbed my hands.
“God, your hands are freezing. Do you need to be checked out? Want me to get an EMT over here, to examine you?”
I shook my head vigorously as I tried to catch my breath.
He pressed me. “You could be going into shock. I’ll be right back.”
When he stood and walked away, I scrambled to my feet. Clutching the steel support, I lingered just long enough to catch my breath.
