P. Tracy - Live Bait

‘You didn’t shoot him.’

‘Jesus, Marty, of course not. What do you think I am?’

‘I don’t know, Jack. You keep surprising me.’

‘Whole damn family’s full of surprises, isn’t it?’ Jack said bitterly. ‘Anyway, on the way home Pop told me what they’d been doing all these years, a lot of things about Auschwitz I wish I hadn’t heard, and how it was my duty as his son, his legacy to me, for chrissake, and that if he died before the “work” was done, I had to finish it.’

‘What did you say?’

Jack looked at him over the rim of his glass. ‘I told him I didn’t want to be his son anymore, that I didn’t even want to be a Jew anymore. And then I set out to make sure I wasn’t.’

Marty nodded slowly, remembering the confirmation picture and the wedding picture, Jack’s sudden absence from the family, finally making sense of the jumble of his actions that Lily had called slaps in the face. ‘You should have talked to Lily about it, Jack.’

Jack smiled and drank all at the same time. ‘Double-edged sword, that one. Triple-edged, actually. Hell, for all I knew, she could have been in on it…’

‘Jesus, Jack, how could you ever think that?’

Jack gaped at him. ‘Christ, Marty, maybe because I never would have thought it of my father either, and look how that turned out. I never really bought that Ma could do such a thing, but I wondered, How do you live with somebody for over fifty years and not know something like that is going on? And whether she did it or just knew about it…’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘I couldn’t face it. I didn’t want to know. And if by some miracle she’d been as fooled by him as I’d been, I sure as hell wasn’t going to break her heart by telling her. So I stayed away from both of them, not saying anything, wondering all the while if Pop was out murdering people while I sat there doing nothing, saying stupid things to get through the days like “Gee, Jack, don’t worry, they’re just Nazis and probably deserve it,” trying to figure out if I could live with myself if I turned in my own father and ruined my mother’s life, or if I could live with myself if I didn’t… Christ.’ He took a breath, then a drink. ‘Gotta tell you, though, the alcohol helped.’

On the other side of the bolted door that led to the potting shed, Lily leaned against the splintered wood, listening, her eyes closed, her face creased with pain. ‘Goddamn you, Morey Gilbert,’ she whispered, then she turned and walked away.

‘You should have come to Hannah and me,’ Marty was saying.

‘Are you kidding? I couldn’t get anywhere near Hannah. She would have had it out of me in three seconds, you know she would have. And it would have killed her, Marty, finding that out about her father. She worshiped that man.’

‘Almost as much as you did,’ Marty said, leaning back in his chair, looking at Jack the drunk, the schlock, the inconsiderate, irresponsible black sheep who had sacrificed everything to spare the people he loved. Inside, Marty wept for him, struggling to focus on what he needed to know. ‘You said the killer was finished except for you, Jack. How do you know that?’

‘Oh, yeah, that. I suspected, but didn’t know for absolute sure until the guy took a shot at me. Pop and the others made a lot of trips, killed a lot of people – he was pretty proud of that – but I was only with them once.’

‘At the fishing lodge in Brainerd.’

‘Right. There was a big old loft up behind the registration desk. Last thing I remember was Pop dragging me out by the arm, everybody yelling at me, and I looked up and saw a shadow move behind one of the big wooden posts up there. Somebody saw us, Marty, and as they say, what goes around, comes around.’

Marty closed his eyes a minute and focused on shutting down his emotions, just as he had when he was on the job. Later, when the killer was caught and Jack was safe, he would pull out the memory of all he had learned tonight and just let himself react, but right now, feelings were a luxury he couldn’t afford. It surprised him a little, that he could do it so quickly and so well. Maybe Jack had been right about that, too. Once a cop, always a cop.

‘Okay, Jack, this is what we’re going to do.’ He pulled his cell phone out of its holster and searched the program for Gino Rolseth’s number. ‘We’re going to call Magozzi and Rolseth over here, and you’re going to tell them everything you told me so they can do their job and get this guy, because I’m not about to leave you alone until he’s locked up somewhere, and personally, I don’t like being in the target zone.’

‘No?’ Jack tried to raise his eyebrows. ‘I thought you were suicidal.’

‘Yeah, well, things change, Jack. Man, do they change.’

When Gino answered, Marty told him where they were, that Jack was ready to talk, and that he might have a lead for them. The minute he clicked off there was a tremendous boom as lightning struck something very nearby, bringing Marty to his feet, and then the rain and wind hit with a vengeance, hammering on the roof, battering at the door. When it flew open and banged against the wall, Marty spun around, the.357 already in his hand, pointed toward the doorway.

A bedraggled Jeff Montgomery stood there with his blue eyes wide as the rain blew in around him.

Jack looked blearily at the poor kid and figured he’d quit for sure now. The last time he’d seen his eyes that big was the night he’d pointed a gun at him in the equipment shed. Too many guns in this family, he decided.

‘Goddamnit, Jeff,’ Marty shouted at him. ‘I told you not to come back here tonight!’ Marty was furious, but the kid looked pathetic, like a drowned rat, and he softened a little. ‘Oh for chrissake, get in here. Did you see Becker?’

‘Uh… yes sir?’ Jeff took a step inside, but his eyes followed Marty’s gun as he jammed it back into the waistband of his pants and pulled his shirt over it.

‘Well, call him in before he gets washed away.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mr Pullman,’ he said, taking another step in and closing the door behind him.

Then he pulled a gun from beneath his black slicker and pointed it at Marty’s chest.

At City Hall, the long-anticipated storm was announcing its arrival. Thunder growled in the near distance and wicked-looking forks of lightning stabbed from one swollen, black cloud to another, like electric children poking at water balloons. A few minutes later, fat drops of rain started blatting against the windows of the Homicide room.

After an hour of working the phones, they still hadn’t found the Montana camper. Nothing from the APBs they put out here and in Vegas, and nothing from the local campgrounds Gino had crossed off his half of the list. He was liking the Montana guy more and more, mostly because they couldn’t find him. He got up from his desk and stretched, took a walk around the office while Magozzi finished the last of his calls.

The little TV on top of a filing cabinet was rarely turned on. Even with the sound muted, the changing images caught the eye and, according to Malcherson, mesmerizied the mind.

Not that he needed a whole lot of help in that department, Gino thought, punching the power button. His mind already felt like mush. Besides, he figured if a tornado was bearing down on them, they ought to know about it in time to dodge flying glass. He pushed mute, but within seconds every eye in the room was on the screen anyway, watching one of Channel Ten’s animated meteorologists dancing around in front of a computerized map. Little cartoon funnels were spinning all over the place.

Langer covered the mouthpiece of his phone with one hand. ‘Anything headed our way?’