George Pelecanos - Nick's trip

I pulled the bottle from my jacket and took a slug of warm bourbon. I swallowed it, breathed deeply, and smelled the air. “Where to now?” I said.

Billy said, “You tell me.” He was standing in front of me, fifteen feet away, his legs wide, his boots planted in the damp leaves and pine needles, the shotgun across his arms. “You said it was down here.”

“It?”

He frowned. “Don’t fuck with me, Greek. Not today. I lost my wife because of some cockeyed scheme that went all wrong. I can’t bring her back. But I have to be real now.” Billy looked a little past my eyes. “If I let this go, then it was for nothing. I’m talking about the money, Nick. It’s out here in these woods, isn’t it?”

“Who told you that? Tommy Crane?”

Billy’s face became tight with anger. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I stood and slid the pint into my side pocket, unzipping my jacket halfway down. A flock of crows glided in over the trees and landed in the clearing. “Settle down, Billy. We’ll get back to that. You want to talk about the money, fine. Let’s get that out of the way.”

“Go ahead.”

“You were right about one thing. I found the suitcase in Crane’s root cellar, the day Hendricks took him out.”

Billy squinted. “Where is it?”

“I used it,” I said.

“Used it how?”

I pushed some hair off my eyes and shifted my weight. “To save your ass, Billy. I met Louis DiGeordano at Hains Point a few weeks ago, and I gave him the money. He owed me a favor, going back a long time ago. I asked that there wouldn’t be any retribution against you, for what you tried to pull on his son. He agreed.”

Billy’s shoulders hunched and shadows fell beneath his eyes. He rubbed his hand over the barrels of the shotgun. “I didn’t need that kind of help from you,” he said, looking at the ground, moving his head slowly from side to side. “That money was dirty. It didn’t belong to anybody. I didn’t hire you to give that money away.”

“I know that, Billy. I know exactly what you hired me for.”

“I hired you to find my wife, and that’s it.”

“You knew where your wife was,” I said. “You knew it all along. You knew it the night you came to me in the Spot, the night you asked for my help. She was already dead, Billy. She’s buried in these woods right now.”

“What’3"›“Whs that?” Billy said softly. “You sayin’ I killed my wife?”

“No. Tommy Crane killed April. You didn’t put the gun to her head. But you were part of it.”

Billy’s finger curled around the trigger of the shotgun. “You got everything all wrong, Nick.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I should have seen it when I woke up in the trailer. You were down by the creek, washing Maybelle with a brush. She had gone off and spent the night in the woods, and she had found April.” I moved to the side, away from a branch that partially blocked my view of Billy. “April had taken the money and left town-that part of what you told me was true. You knew she’d head right down here and see Crane. I think you phoned Crane and tipped him off about the cash. You probably told him to get it from her, and then there’d be some sort of split between the two of you. But Crane killed April-maybe because she resisted, or maybe just because he wanted to watch her die. When it was over, Crane decided to keep it all himself-he didn’t need you anymore, and he could always use blackmail if you tried to get rough.”

A forced, sickly smile spread across Billy’s face. “You’re way off,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I’m not. You didn’t hire me to find your wife. You hired me to shake down Crane for the money. You knew I wouldn’t give up on it. You knew it because we were friends, and our being friends meant something.” I looked him over. “You were really slick, Billy. Those photographs you sent me, of April. They weren’t pictures of April at all. It wasn’t much of a risk on your part-I wouldn’t have shown them to anyone who knew her, there wouldn’t have been any need. And April’s jewelry-you planted it in the bathroom of Crane’s cottage while I was with him in the sty. The bathroom was the one room of his house I had told you I’d be in. When I confronted Crane with the ring, he told me that it was a stupid trick. It didn’t hit me at the time, but that’s exactly what it was-a trick you used, with a duplicate ring, to get me back down to Crane’s. If it worked, fine. If it didn’t, and Crane took me out, then there was no loss there either, right, Billy? I’m willing to bet that when the cops dig April up, that ruby ring will still be on her finger.”

“This is bullshit,” Billy said. “You’ve got no proof of any of this. None.”

“I’ve got proof. April was killed on Tuesday night-I confirmed it with Hendricks. The date and time of her death were displayed right on the videotape. And Crane was seen with April, earlier that night, at Polanski’s. Crane had two beers in front of him on the bar, and Tuesday’s two-for-one night. But you told me you went drinking with your wife on Tuesday night, at Bernardo O’Reilly’s.”

“You confirmed it yourself. You went there and-”

“Shut up, Billy. Shut up and let me finish. The bartender at Bernardo O’Reilly’s said you were with a woman that night who polished off nearly a fifth of rum, all by herself.”

“That’s right,” Billy said. “Rum was April’s drink. It’s all she could keep down.”

“April was grape-sensitive. That means she could only drink rum ly drinkthat was bottled in Jamaica. The woman you were with in O’Reilly’s was drinking Bacardi Dark.” I spoke slowly. “That’s Puerto Rican rum, Billy.”

Billy swung the shotgun in my direction. I reached into my jacket and drew the Browning from its holster, locking back the hammer. I pointed the gun at Billy’s chest.

“Break that Remington,” I said. “Break it and throw the shells to the right. Then toss the shotgun to the left.”

A watery redness had seeped into Billy’s azure eyes. “Nick, you don’t think-”

“Do it,” I said, my voice rising. Billy separated the shotgun from the shells and threw them onto the leafy earth. Behind him the crows lifted out of the clearing and flew over the trees.

“So,” Billy said. “This is how we end it.”

“That’s right.”

Billy dug his feet into the leaves and looked up at the tops of the trees, then back at me. “I would have been square with you from the beginning, Nick. That was my intention-to get your help in getting my money back from Crane, with a piece of it going back to you. But from the first minute I hooked up with you, I could see it wasn’t going to be like that.” He stared down at his boots. “The world isn’t all good or all bad, like you think. It’s somewhere in between. The ones who come out of it all right are the ones who pull from both ways.”

“Skip the bullshit,” I said, my knuckles bloodless on the automatic’s grip. “Our friendship-any friendship-it’s the only thing that sticks. Everything rots, but that’s always supposed to be there. You used it, man. You ruined it.”

Billy looked me over and shook his head. “You better wake up,” he said. “You think anything I did when I was nineteen means anything to me? You talked about that time in the park when we tripped, when I gave you my shoes. You talked about it like it was important. Shit, Nick, I barely even remember it. That might as well have been two different people that day. It’s got nothing to do with this.”

“It’s got everything to do with this.”

Billy buried his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Then that brings us back to now.”

I straightened my gun arm. “I’m not letting you walk, Billy.”