Howard Shrier - Buffalo jump

“I’m strictly private,” I assured her. “I’m not connected to the police or the FDA or any law enforcement agency in the U.S.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Information.”

“What kind?”

“This venture of yours has had ramifications you may not know about. At least I hope you don’t.”

“Go on,” Amy said.

“A pharmacist was murdered in Toronto last month. He had been supplying Canadian medications to people here in Buffalo.”

Their voices chimed in together: “What! Who?”

“Kenneth Page.”

Neither showed any sign they knew the name.

“Now another has been targeted,” I said. “A man named Jay Silver.”

“Oh my God,” Amy said.

She knew him. The possibility of his murder was clearly a personal horror, not abstract. Barry motioned her not to say anything but she cut him off with a downward slash of her hand.

“And it’s not just him,” I said. “His entire family will be killed. His wife and five-year-old son too. Jay, Laura and Lucas, all of them.” Listen to their names, I thought. Know them.

“But all he’s done is help people like us get prescriptions without going broke. Why would someone kill him?”

“Because he knows who murdered Kenneth Page and they can’t trust him not to talk. And because the drugs in his store were worth millions. The truck that just left here-that entire load-was from his store. They basically looted it. They weren’t afraid to, Amy, because they don’t expect Silver or his family to live long enough to do anything about it.”

“He’s bullshitting us, Ames. Next he’s going to tell us he should take the product off our hands. Get the fuck out of my house, man. I don’t want to tell you again.”

“You’re going to get yourselves killed.”

“Only if we talk,” Amy cut in.

“Whether you talk or not.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Because the killing has started. Not just Kenneth Page, not just Silver and his family, but also a guy I worked with, another investigator. He was killed Monday. A witness-a retired old man-was beaten half to death on Wednesday. Someone has to stop them and it seems to have fallen to me. So help me. Please. Tell me who you work for.”

The two of them stayed silent, looking at each other. Then Barry walked over to the table and put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. She covered it with her own. “I’m sorry, Mr. Geller,” Amy said. “I like Jay Silver. I hope nothing bad happens to his family, I really do. But it would be best if you left now.”

I looked at her when I said, “You’ll stand by while a family is killed?”

“He’ll kill us if we talk.”

“Who will?” I asked. “Ricky Messina?”

The fear in her eyes was palpable. “You do know him…”

“Yes,” I said. “But I am not on his side. I can help take him off your backs.”

“You and what army?” Barry scoffed. He drew himself up to his full height and stepped between me and Amy. “That’s enough,” he said. “Get out now.”

“Barry-”

“We have to look out for ourselves. Now for the last fucking time, get out!”

I heard footsteps coming down the hall. A dozen men and women crowded into the doorway, Marty at the front of the pack. I moved toward the back door so none of them could get behind me.

“Everything okay?” Marty asked.

“Fine,” Barry said. “He was just leaving.”

I didn’t move. The room became eerily quiet. Not a word was spoken; there was just the hiss of a candle in a cylindrical glass holder on the window sill.

“I can’t go,” I said.

“You heard Barry,” Marty said. “Out of here, now.”

He put a hand on my left shoulder, squeezed it and said, “I’ll bounce you down the steps if you’re not out by the time I count three.”

Counting three. What did he think this was, a schoolyard? I drove my fist up into his armpit. There’s a cluster of nerves in there that doesn’t much like getting hit. It numbs the arm completely. Marty’s grip loosened and he sank to the floor, his face as pale as marble. Then came the sound of breaking glass behind us. Amy’s head snapped around. The kitchen door had nine glass panes in three rows of three. The pane closest to the doorknob had been shattered and a gloved hand was reaching in through the broken pane and turning the deadbolt.

Amy’s eyes grew as wide as those of a horse in a barn fire. She stood up so fast the heavy oak table went up onto two legs, sending vials of pills of all colours rolling to the floor.

“Oh God,” she gasped. “It’s Ricky. Barry, it’s Ricky. Don’t let him in. Don’t let him touch me. You promised, Barry. You swore.”

Barry started toward the door but it banged open before he was halfway there and Dante Ryan stepped into the kitchen. His right hand was inside his jacket. Barry stopped where he was. Amy’s breathing still came fast and shallow, but the fear in her eyes began to ebb. A strange, threatening man had just broken into her kitchen, but it wasn’t Ricky. I wondered what he had done to get so far under her skin.

“It’s okay,” I said to Ryan. “One guy just got excited.”

“Asshole,” Marty rasped, his forehead beaded with sweat.

“You’ll be all right,” I told him. Then I went to Amy and said quietly, “I told you I wasn’t with Ricky. This man and I are very much against him, in fact. I think he killed all the people I mentioned and tried to kill me. So talk to me. Help us get Ricky out of your life.”

“How?” she whispered. She was trying hard to find some kind of centred calm, but the faint billowing of her blouse showed how shaky she was. “By reporting him to the police? Even if he got life in prison, he’d kill me the day he got out. Slowly, with his knife. He told me. He showed me.” Her hands went to her belly and stayed there as if they were the only thing preventing her insides from spilling out onto the floor.

“Who said anything about prison?”

She looked into my eyes for a long moment. She was searching now to find what could live inside me that could take Ricky down.

“You think you can kill him?” she asked.

It wasn’t a question I could answer out loud. I could only hold her gaze and hope she would see in Ryan the tacit but unspoken fact that it would be his professional and personal pleasure to clip Ricky Messina.

“Then do it,” she said. “When he’s dead I’ll tell you every last thing. Until then I have nothing to say.”

Ryan and I didn’t want to be seen leaving the house together, so he stayed in a dark corner behind the garage. I told him I’d wait for him at the car.

I would have too if it weren’t for the woman leaning against the passenger door of the Dadmobile, arms folded tightly across her chest. About forty in a light mauve suit, with blue eyes and shoulder-length red hair that had been straightened. It looked as dry and stiff as an old paintbrush.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

She said, “That depends.”

“On what?”

“How badly you want to stay out of jail.”

Her name was Christine Staples and she had the credentials to prove it, professionally presented in a genuine leather case. “I’m with the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigation. We’re the investigative arm of the agency. The FBI of the FDA, if you will.”

“A woman of letters,” I said. She suppressed any sign of finding it funny. No Katherine Hollinger, this one. All business, down to her square-toed loafers.

She asked for ID and I showed her my licence. If it provided any credibility, she didn’t show that either.

“I’ve been watching that house,” she said. “Only today I’ve been watching you watching the house. What’s your interest?”