Orest Stelmach - The Boy Who Stole from the Dead

“I didn’t threaten you,” Johnny said. “I made you a promise.”

“If a promise ends badly for the other person it’s a threat.”

“Really? Who cares? What do you want?”

“For things to end well for everyone.”

“Come again?”

“For things to end well for everyone.”

“We’re having a bit of a language issue here. You’re a philosopher. I’m a lawyer. I don’t speak philosophical. You want to translate that into English?”

“I want to help you.”

The twins appeared behind Johnny. He hadn’t even heard the doors to the Town Car open, let alone close. Up close they looked a bit more mature than through the windshield. And tougher. Johnny could see it in their eyes. They looked unconcerned they might have to harm another human being to get what they wanted. Johnny knew that look. The James brothers wore it. It defined the most dangerous people in society. People that had a different set of morals, or none whatsoever.

“You want to help me.” Johnny smiled. “ You want to help me .”

“Yes. Very much.”

“With what?”

“Not what. Who. The boy in prison. The boy that calls himself Bobby Kungenook. I want to help him. And his surrogate mother.”

The idea was so preposterous Johnny didn’t know what to say. Except Victor wasn’t laughing.

“Sure you do,” Johnny said. “That’s what thieves and killers do. Help widows and orphans.”

Victor tossed his cigarette butt. The ember burned orange-red. He placed his toe over it and ground it into the asphalt. The flame died. “I’m not the same man you knew last year. I found out I have a daughter. And now a grandchild.”

“Congratulations.”

“I want to help the people who helped me.”

“I remember you chasing Nadia and Bobby around the world. How exactly are they supposed to have helped you?”

“My cousin, Kirilo, chased them as well. Even before that he’d sent an assassin to kill me. The woman and the boy put me on an even playing field with him. The chase created the opportunity for me to tilt the field in my favor. I was able to eliminate him before he eliminated me.”

“So you want to thank Nadia and Bobby by helping him? How?”

“By helping you get him out of prison.”

Johnny laughed. “This keeps getting better. How exactly are you going to do that?”

“I have a contact inside the police department. He tells me there’s an eyewitness. You will give me the name of this eyewitness and I will have a conversation with him. I will convince him to stop lying and tell the truth.”

“You’re out of your mind. I’m an officer of the court. I’m sworn to uphold the law. Are you even capable of understanding what that means?”

“I’m not going to convince a witness to lie. I’m going to make him understand he must tell the truth.” Victor lowered his voice. “You and I both know this boy. We know his real name is not Bobby. We know how he got here. We know why he came here. There is no chance—I repeat, no chance—that he killed that man unless it was self-defense. Can we at least agree on that?”

Johnny didn’t want to agree with him about anything. Anything. But on this question, he had no choice. “Yeah. We can agree on that.”

“Good. And can we also agree that given Adam confessed to the crime, and he hasn’t taken back the confession, there’s no guarantee he’s going to help himself? He’s prepared to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

Johnny thought it over. As much as he thought Bobby might crack any day there was no guarantee he would ever tell the truth. Johnny had no choice but to agree with the old bastard on that one, too. “Yeah. We can agree on that, too.”

“Good. Now, how important is this boy to Nadia?”

Johnny remembered Nadia sitting on the edge of her seat during Bobby’s hockey games, fists clenched.

Victor nodded before Johnny said anything. “Of course he is. And who is Nadia counting on to keep the boy out of prison for the rest of his life?”

Johnny imagined a guilty verdict. Bobby remanded into custody. The sentencing. Bobby being taken away in cuffs for good. He pictured Nadia crying. No, he thought. It would be worse. She wouldn’t cry. Her eyes would water but no tears would flow. She’d keep her sorrow bottled up inside where it would gradually eat her up. Prevent her from experiencing joy. Reduce her life expectancy.

“The idea of me handing over a witness’s name to you is a joke. It’s a non-starter. So don’t even go there again. But if your fair-haired protégés behind you here somehow acquired it, tell me again, what exactly would you do?”

Victor answered the question.

Afterward, Johnny drove to a diner three blocks away behind the Elizabeth train station. He ordered an iced tea and reviewed Bobby’s case file. The twins came in a few minutes later. They ordered coffees and sat at the table beside him. Johnny went to use the men’s room. He left the file open.

When Johnny came out of the men’s room, the twins were gone.

Johnny drove to Rikers Island. He dwelled on the ethical implications of what he’d done. Once he arrived and started walking toward the prison, however, his thoughts turned to the true motive behind Victor Bodnar’s actions. Johnny didn’t believe the old man gave a damn about Nadia or Bobby. Sure. Maybe he’d mellowed. A child and a grandchild could change a man. But he had ulterior motives. He was a born thief. He had stolen all his life. That’s who he was, and that’s what he did.

If the ulterior motive required Bobby’s safe release from prison, that meant the kid had something worth stealing. Something Victor couldn’t locate without Bobby’s help. That could be only one thing.

The locket.

Everyone thought it was worthless, but what if it wasn’t?

LAUREN FOLLOWED VICTOR Bodnar and the twins to a parking garage two blocks away from his apartment. As soon as she saw them walk into the garage, she hailed a cab and waited by the curb. Five minutes later the garage attendant pulled out in a Lincoln Town Car. Victor handed him a tip. One of the twins opened the back door for him, and they took off toward the West Side.

Lauren told the driver to follow them. They took the Holland Tunnel to Route 9 in New Jersey to Elizabeth. Not the portrait of American urban serenity. Even the McDonalds had iron bars on the windows. One of the twins jumped out at the entrance to one of the courthouses. He came back out fifteen minutes later. They circled around the guest parking lot and pulled up by the side of the road across the street. When a formidable-looking guy in a ponytail rounded the corner, Victor walked over to the Monte Carlo.

At first she thought the twin was there to attend a hearing. After all, one of them had hacked her computer. But when he came back out she realized it was something else. The man with the ponytail looked like an MMA fighter turned lawyer. He had to be Victor’s attorney. He walked a hundred yards before he saw Victor. Lauren was seated in the cab the same distance in the opposite direction, wedged between two economy cars.

From her vantage point, Lauren couldn’t deduce anything about the meeting. There was a moment when Victor made a big show of stomping out his cigarette, and another one when the twins came over, but other than that nothing noteworthy happened. Lauren wondered if the old man was the head of a criminal enterprise built around identity theft. Maybe there were criminal charges outstanding in his name, she thought.