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Susan reached over and held my hand. I squeezed her fingers.

“So, in the apartment with Malone, I beat this guy up,” I said. “I admit it. I mean, I broke bones. I thought he had been whaling on his girlfriend and he’d put the icing on the cake by threatening to ruin her life. Malone tried to stop me, but I really did a number on him. And then as we’re leaving, I see Malone’s backpack is full.”

“Oh no,” Susan said. Her voice told me she could see ahead, into the depths of my downfall.

I continued. “In the hall I say to Malone, ‘What’s in the bag?’ and he says, ‘I don’t know which device the kid’s got the tape on. I took laptops, tablets, hard drives, everything. I’ll find the file, delete it, and send the stuff back.’ Already I’m fuming, because this is not what I agreed to. We go our separate ways that night, and the next morning Malone’s on top of the world. I figure the girl and her mother must have thanked him, and the boyfriend had taken the beating and maybe learned from it. It must have all gone perfectly.”

I gripped the steering wheel hard, trying to shut down all the screaming voices in my head, the thoughts about what I could have and should have done to stop what happened.

“Turns out there was no girl,” I told Susan. “No sex tape. It was all lies.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

“THE APARTMENT MALONE robbed— that I helped him rob —belonged to Ivan Pilkos, an illegal arms dealer in Boston,” I said. “Malone took a quarter of a million bucks from the guy, and then I go in there and bash his head in about some girlfriend and some tape that never existed. Pilkos was just some low-level scumbag Malone had heard was all cashed up. He’d never even met the guy. He was asleep on the couch when Malone walked in.”

“Oh my God.” Susan covered her mouth. I nodded.

“What Malone didn’t realize,” I said, “is that across the street from the apartment building was a private storage facility. A big, expensive, highly exclusive private storage facility. This place has storage boxes and vaults for rich people who don’t trust banks, and it has cameras all over the front of the shop.”

“But surely he looked for cameras,” Susan said.

“There were obvious ones and hidden ones,” I said. “Malone thought he was taking us in at the right angle so the cameras couldn’t see us, but he didn’t know about the hidden ones. The firm was so paranoid, they had cameras all over the street. Sure, they wanted to get video of the robbers when they were inside the facility, but they also wanted video of their car, their escape route, their getaway driver. The cameras got Malone and me outside the apartment building. They got video of us in the lobby. They even got a shot through the apartment window of Malone stuffing his backpack with stacks of cash. A rooftop camera. Clear as day. It was unbelievable.”

I sighed, exhausted.

“The people who worked for the secure facility thought we were common burglars, and they turned the footage in to the department,” I said. “We were fired two weeks later.”

“Did they take back the money Malone stole?”

“The department wanted to keep it quiet,” I said. “Keep it away from the press. A story about dirty cops in Boston would have been front-page news for a month. They asked Malone where the cash was, but he clammed up. He was fired anyway, and he knew they wouldn’t prosecute him. Pilkos wouldn’t press charges on the beating. There was a search of Malone’s place for the cash, but nothing was found.”

“Why did he take it?”

“He said back then it was because he was in debt,” I said. “I knew he’d bought his apartment at the wrong time, and the market downturn had left him in trouble. But tonight he told me that he came up with the plan just after his diagnosis. He wanted to get experimental treatments that insurance wouldn’t pay for. He gave twenty years to the city and he wanted something back. I mean, I understand where he was coming from. That money would have been used for a good cause. Who knows what Pilkos was planning to do with it?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. It seemed, for a moment, that Susan could read my mind. That in the closeness of the car, she might have sensed my secret, the cash under my bed. When she spoke, it was a relief.

“You didn’t try explaining what had happened to the commissioner?” Susan asked. “Telling her why you got involved?”

“There was nothing to explain,” I said. “I was guilty. I’d robbed and beaten a man. Just because I thought what I was doing was right didn’t excuse it. And turning Malone in would have been serving my best friend up on a platter.” I looked at her. She was watching me, her eyes dark and thoughtful. “Whatever wrong I’ve done in the world, I’d never turn in a friend.”

“Has he apologized?” Susan asked. “I mean, I don’t want to be judgmental. I don’t know what was going on in this man’s life. But you were his partner. He betrayed you.”

“What can the guy do? He can’t take it back.”

“Well, he owes you,” she said, sitting up in her seat. “Bigtime.”

I drove in silence, thinking about Susan’s words. After a while, I began to pick out a familiar stretch of road from the darkness, the trees and hedges that I knew led me past somewhere I did not want to go. I spotted the house in the distance and saw that a light was on in one of the windows.

I made the decision and latched onto it, afraid that if I questioned it at all, I would change my mind.

“What are we doing?” Susan asked as I pulled the car over outside my wife’s killer’s house.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

CLINE LIKED A purge night, liked to get all his business taken care of in one hit, before his targets could scatter like roaches from a kitchen light. The first time he’d cleaned house, he’d wiped out his whole crew only weeks after assembling them. He’d found out he had a rat in his pack when a cop had dragged him in and told him about it; the cop wanted half Cline’s stash for the favor. Cline had called the crew in, told them there was a last-minute job on, and driven them to a field in a big van. Then he’d turned around in the driver’s seat and said nothing while he sprayed them all with an automatic like fucking Tony Montana. Made them dance in their seats. He’d sat in the field afterward and watched the van burn, the coiling smoke and embers rising into the night. He’d felt pure.

Now he closed the door of the Escalade quietly, put his gloved hands in the pockets of his coat, and counted off the street lamps as he walked toward Addison Gilbert Hospital’s parking lot. He pulled his cap down low on his brow as he crossed the lot and opened the back door that Dr. Raymond Locke had left unlatched for him.

There’d be no playing around with Russ the way there had been with Simbo. He’d knelt by Simbo’s body after the thrashing stopped and looked at the red starbursts in the whites of his eyes, the colors still leaking in the last stutters of his heart. Cline walked the halls of Addison Gilbert and took the stairs to the second floor, following the scrape marks in the paint of thousands of gurneys passing.

Cline found the curtains pulled around bed fourteen. He checked his weapon, nosed the gun between the curtains, and shoved the fabric aside suddenly. The skinny white guy in the bed jolted awake.

Cline recalculated quickly. Let the gun waver just an inch. “Who the fuck are you?” he snarled.

The guy didn’t answer. Cline lifted the chart from the bottom of the bed. Russell Hamdy. Right name, wrong target. Cline walked down the hall, swept the curtains back from all the other beds, checked the vile snoring and moaning creatures he found there.