William Lashner - Past Due

“You know, you guys, if you’re going to talk about the law at least get the words right. Statute of limitations, all right. Statute. Say it after me. Statute.”

“Eat me.”

“Close enough. And the news is, Derek, there is no statute of limitations on murder.”

“Crap. This could throw off the whole deal. When I told them what I would tell them there wasn’t anything about no murder.”

“Let me show you something.” I reached into my jacket pocket, pulled out the photograph that Mrs. Greeley had given me, the photograph of her son, Tommy, with that smirk on his face. I handed it over to Derek. “Was that the guy with the suitcase?”

He looked at it, squinted his eyes, turned his head to take it in sideways. “It was a long time ago.”

“Was that the guy?”

“It’s hard to be sure, you know.”

“Was that the guy, Derek?”

“The prick with the suitcase? Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

I took the picture back, thought a bit. “Tell me what happened that night?”

“It was like you said. Joey got a little overenthusiastic with the baseball bat. Got him in the face. The guy went down. Boom.”

“Dead?”

“Sure.”

“You check his pulse?”

“I seen enough fish in the tank to know dead. He wasn’t moving.”

“Did you check his pulse?”

“No.”

“Put a mirror to his mouth to see if it fogged?”

“He wasn’t moving.”

“Did you have a stethoscope?”

“It was a rough-up, not a checkup.”

“You ever see a live possum?”

“No.”

“It’s because they play dead.”

“What the fuck you talking about, Victor? I never seen a dead one neither.”

“What did you do to the body?”

“We kicked it into the river.”

“Did you wrap it in chains? Did you weight it down with blocks. Did you stuff the body into a canvas duffel? What?”

“I told you, we kicked it into the river.”

“Just kicked it into the river.”

“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

“Your hit man technique stinks.”

“We was young.”

“You were stupid.”

“Go to hell.”

“You stupid son of a bitch, you stupid stupid son of a bitch.”

“Victor, why are yous coming down on me like this?”

“If you and Joey are going to spend your lives cursed because of a murder, you might as well make sure you commit it proper.”

“What are yous saying here?”

“Look, I think you’re in the clear. I think what you did is well beyond the limitations period.”

“But you said-”

“I know what I said. Give me a few days before you say anything to anyone, all right, and by then I’ll know for sure. But you have to tell me something now. You have to tell me who it was who hired you to give that kid the rough-up in the park.”

He leaned forward, looked around, lowered his voice even more, so it was barely audible over the continuing screed of the television news. “All right. You sure you want to know?”

“Spill.”

“It was Deep End Benny.”

I just stared.

“Remember that picture you showed me in that deposition, the three altar boys? Joey, me, and some other guy? Well, the other guy was Deep End Benny. It was the three of us growing up, except Benny, he was a vicious little snipe, off the deep end, which was how he got his name. And that was before he got into crank. He hired us.”

“Where’s Benny now?”

“Dead. He built up a rep and started working for the boys. But he was too crazy even for them, too crazy for Scarfo. You had to be son of a bitch crazy to be too crazy for Scarfo. Shot through the head, tossed off a bridge, run over by a truck. They wasn’t taking no chances with Benny.”

“So why were you scared to tell me if he was dead?”

“Because Dante knew. He was still just a pawn boy then, Dante, standing like a nothing behind the counter in his shop, but he found out.”

“How?”

“Joey pulled a watch off the dead guy’s wrist. When he pawned it, Dante asked his questions. Joey didn’t know enough to say nothing. That was how Dante made his way to the top. He knew everything what was happening in the whole of South Philly because of who was pawning what.”

“But why would Dante still care if Benny was dead? I’m missing something here.”

“You ain’t so swift, is you, Victor? It wasn’t important right off, but Dante, he stored it away until it became something that he could use. And he’s been waiting, patiently, for a time to use it. Deep End Benny, he had a big brother, a wimp what meant nothing to nobody except to Benny when we was growing up, or even later, when this whole thing went down. But eventually, Benny’s brother, he made good, damn good. And when the time comes, Dante is going to take the info and turn it into a free pass out of whatever trouble he gets into with the law. See, here’s the thing. Our boy, our friend, the guy what Joey and me, we was altar boys with, it was Deep End Benny Straczynski.”

IT WAS ALLcoming into focus, what had happened twenty years ago and what was happening now, it was all coming into focus. The only question was what to do about it.

“I can’t tell you,” I said as Slocum and I drove back toward the hospital, where my car was parked. “We were lawyer-client.”

“Did he pay you?”

“I’m treating it as privileged. But he’ll tell you everything as soon as he can. I made sure of that. Do you have a meeting set up?”

“The feds are guarding their time like a jealous lover. But, day after tomorrow, McDeiss and I have been given a couple of hours to question him about twenty years ago.”

“Good. That should give me enough time to find out what I need to find out.” My query had been sent to California, but no telling how long before I heard back, and I had a quicker way of finding out the truth. “Make sure you ask him in detail about what actually happened to the body. And make sure you ask him who it was who hired him.”

“Interesting?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Will I want to hear the answer.”

“Oh, no.”

“Damn it. I got a big enough headache as it is. Did anything else happen up there? Did you say anything to get him upset?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. He looked a little peaked when he came down the stairs.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, yes.”

And Slocum was right, he did. Derek Manley was positively pale when he followed me down the stairs, his eyes bulging, his hand shaking ever so slightly. It was like I had passed him a virulent flu with the utterance of one simple word.

I had thought long and hard about whether I should pass that word along. I didn’t want to do Dante’s bidding, and I considered telling Slocum about what Dante had asked me to pass along before I climbed those stairs, but in the end I decided to handle it as I handled it. Whatever game Derek Manley was playing, he thought he could see all the angles. Dante was using me to tell him that there were angles he hadn’t anticipated, dangers he hadn’t sidestepped. It wasn’t up to me or Slocum or the feds to decide what risks Manley was willing to take. Derek Manley was a big boy, he was making the decisions, he should know the price he would have to pay, what precautions he would have to take. So after he had told me all I needed to know, and I told him what I thought had happened that night twenty years ago, I also told him I had a message from a friend, and I leaned over and placed my lips to his ear and whispered the single word.

His face, when he heard that word, was like a time-lapse film of the wilting of a flower, an ugly bulbous flower, true, but still a flower, losing its bloom in the blink of an eye.