Harlan Coben - Gone for Good

Yvonne answered on the first ring.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Got something big here, Will."

"I'm listening."

"We should have realized it earlier."

"What's that?"

"Put the pieces together. A guy with a pseudonym. The FBI's strong interest. All the secrecy. A small community in a quiet area. You with me?"

"Not really, no."

"Cripco was the key," she went on. "As I said, it's a dummy corporation. So I checked with a few sources. Truth is, they don't try to hide them that hard. The cover isn't that deep. The way they figure it, if someone spots the guy, they know or they don't know. They aren't going to do a big background check."

"Yvonne?" I said.

"What?"

"I don't have a clue what you're talking about."

"Cripco, the company who leased the house and the car, traces back to the United States marshal's office."

Once again I felt my head teeter and spin. I let it go and a bright hope surfaced in the dark, murky blur. "Wait a second," I said. "Are you saying that Owen Enfield is an undercover agent?"

"No, I don't think so. I mean, what would he be investigating at Stonepointe someone cheating at gin rummy?"

"What then?"

"The U.S. marshal not the FBI runs the witness protection program."

More confusion. "So you're saying that Owen Enfield…?"

"That the government was hiding him here, yeah. They gave him a new identity. The key, like I said before, is that they don't take the background that deep. A lot of people don't know that. Hell, sometimes they're even dumb about it. My source at the paper was telling me about this black drug dealer from Baltimore who they stuck in a lily-white suburb outside Chicago. A total screw up. That wasn't the case here, but if, say, Gotti were searching for Sammy the Bull, they'd either recognize him or not. They wouldn't bother checking his background to make sure. You know what I mean?"

"I think so."

"So the way I figure it, this Owen Enfield was bad news. Most of the guys in witness protection are. So he's in the program and for some reason he murders these two guys and runs off. The FBI doesn't want that out. Think how embarrassing it would be the government cuts a deal with a guy and then he goes on a murder spree? Bad press all the way around, you know what I mean?"

I didn't say anything.

"Will?"

"Yeah."

There was a pause. "You're holding out on me, aren't you?"

I thought about what to do.

"Come on," she said. "Back and forth, remember? I give, you give."

I don't know what I would have said if I would have told her that my brother and Owen Enfield were one and the same, if I would have concluded that publicizing this was better than keeping it in the dark but the decision was taken from me. I heard a click and then the phone went dead.

There was a sharp knock on the door.

"Federal officers. Open up now."

I recognized the voice. It belonged to Claudia Fisher. I reached for the knob, twisted it, and was nearly knocked over. Fisher burst in with a gun drawn. She told me to put my hands up. Her partner, Darryl Wilcox, was with her. They both looked pale, weary, and maybe even frightened.

"What the hell is this?" I said.

"Hands up now!"

I did as she asked. She took out her cuffs, and then, as though thinking better of it, she stopped. Her voice was suddenly soft. "You'll come without a hassle?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Then come on, let's go."

I did not argue. I did not call their bluff or demand a phone call or any of that. I did not even ask them where we were going. Such protestations at this delicate juncture would, I knew, be either superfluous or harmful.

Pistillo had warned me to stay away. He had gone so far as to have me arrested for a crime I did not commit. He'd promised to frame me if need be. And still I had not backed down. I wondered where I'd unearthed this new-found bravery and I realized that it was simply a matter of having nothing more to lose. Maybe that was what bravery always is being past the point of giving a rat's ass. Sheila and my mother were dead. My brother had been lost to me. You corner a man, even one as weak as this one, and you see the animal emerge.

We pulled up to a row of houses in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Everywhere I looked I saw the same thing: tidy lawns, overdone flower beds, rusted once-white furniture, hoses snaking through the grass attached to sprinklers that vacillated in a lazy haze. We approached a house no different from any other. Fisher tried the knob. It was unlocked. They led me through a room with a pink sofa and console TV. Photographs of two boys ran along the top of the console. The photos were in age order, starting with two infants. In the last one, the boys, both teenagers now, were formally dressed, each bussing a cheek of a woman I assumed was their mother.

The kitchen had a swing door. Pistillo sat at the Formica table with an iced tea. The woman in the photograph, the probable mother, stood by the sink. Fisher and

Wilcox made themselves scarce. I stayed standing.

"You have my phone tapped," I said.

Pistillo shook his head. "A tap just tells you where a call originated. What we're using here are listening devices. And just so we're clear, they were court ordered."

"What do you want from me?" I asked him.

"The same thing I've wanted for eleven years," he said. "Your brother."

The woman at the sink turned on the faucet. She rinsed out a glass. More photos, some with the woman, some with Pistillo and other youngsters but again mostly the same two boys, had been hung on the refrigerator by magnets. These were more recent and casual shots at the shore, in the yard, that kind of thing.

Pistillo said, "Maria?"

The woman shut off the water and turned toward him.

"Maria, this is Will Klein. Will, Maria."

The woman I assumed that this was Pistillo's wife dried her hands on a dish towel. Her grip was firm.

"Nice to meet you," she said a little too formally.

I mumbled and nodded, and when Pistillo signaled, I sat on a metal chair with vinyl padding.

"Would you like something to drink, Mr. Klein?" Maria asked me.

"No, thank you."

Pistillo raised his glass of iced tea. "Dynamite stuff. You should have a glass."

Maria kept hovering. I finally accepted the iced tea just so we could move on. She took her time pouring and putting the glass in front of me. I thanked her and tried a smile. She tried one back, but it flickered even weaker than mine.

She said, "I'll wait in the other room, Joe."

"Thanks, Maria."

She pushed through the swinging door.

"That's my sister," he said, still looking at the door she'd just gone through. He pointed to the snapshots on the refrigerator. "Those are her two boys. Vic Junior is eighteen now. Jack is sixteen."

"Uh-huh." I folded my hands and rested them on the table. "You've been listening in on my calls."

"Yes."

"Then you already know that I don't have a clue where my brother is."

He took a sip of the iced tea. "That I do." He was still staring at the refrigerator; he head-gestured for me to do likewise. "You notice anything missing from those pictures?"

"I'm really not in the mood for games, Pistillo."

"No, me neither. But take a longer look. What's missing?"

I did not bother to look because I already knew. "The father."

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me like a game show host. "Got it on the first try," he said. "Impressive."

"What the hell is this?"

"My sister lost her husband twelve years ago. The boys, well, you can do the math on your own. They were six and four. Maria raised them on her own. I pitched in where I could, but an uncle isn't a father, you know what I mean?"

I said nothing.

"His name was Victor Dober. That name mean anything to you?"