Харлан Кобен - Win

I do a bit. There was a mob war. The Staunches won.

“So Uncle Nero, he became like a father to me. Still is. You know he comes in here a few times a week? At his age, amazing. He had a stroke so it’s hard for him. He uses a wheelchair.”

I look at the handicap railings. I remember the ramp at the door.

“Let me skip ahead, okay?” he says.

“Please.”

“When those college kids killed my sister, no one had to say anything because we all understood: The family was going to avenge Sophia’s death. In Uncle Nero’s eyes, this was worse than what happened to my father. That, at least, was business. The Jane Street Six to us were a bunch of spoiled, overeducated, anti-war, draft-dodging, leftist pinkos. It made Sophia’s death, in our eyes, even more senseless.”

I could see that. Someone like Nero Staunch would see these rich, pampered kids — students who would look down at someone like him, make him feel inferior — and feel even more enraged.

“So Uncle Nero put out the word. He started searching for them. He made it very clear that anyone who gave us information on any of the Jane Street Six — or heck, could prove he killed one — would be richly rewarded.”

“I bet you received some leads,” I say.

“We did. But you want to know something surprising?”

“Sure.”

“None panned out. For two years, we got nothing.”

“And then?”

“And then Lake Davies got caught or turned herself in, I don’t even know which. Lake understood the score. Once she got into the prison system, we would be able to get to her. And if by some chance we couldn’t — if they put her in protective custody, for example — we would get her when she got out. So her lawyer came to us to deal.”

“Davies gave you information,” I say.

“Yes.”

This all made sense to me. Lake Davies would make a deal with the Staunches so as to protect herself. When she was released from prison, she then changed identities and, in short, went back undercover just in case the Staunches chose to no longer honor their deal.

I remembered what Lake Davies had said to me when we met up at her pet hotel, the Ritz Snarl-Fun. I asked her whether she’d gone into hiding in West Virginia because she feared Ry Strauss would find her. Her reply:

“Not just Ry.”

“So who did Davies give you?” I ask.

A shadow crosses his face. “Lionel Underwood.”

The room falls silent.

I ask, “Where was he?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, not really.”

“I always figured they were hiding on hippie communes or something. But Lionel, maybe because he was Black or something, I don’t know, he was living under the name Bennett Leifer in Cleveland, Ohio. He worked as a trucker. He was married. His wife was pregnant.”

“Did the wife know who he really was?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No,” I say. “I guess not.”

“You can probably guess the rest.”

“You killed him?”

Leo Staunch says nothing, which says everything. He collapses back into the chair hard, as though someone had taken out his knees. For a few moments, we just sit there in silence. When Leo speaks again, his voice is low.

“We own the entire row of warehouses on this side of the street. There is a building two doors down. It’s a muffler shop now, but back then...” His eyes close. “It took three days.”

“You were there?”

His eyes are still closed. He nods his head. I am not sure what to make of it, so for now, I go with the obvious. Lionel Underwood is dead. Of the Jane Street Six, I now know the fate of three — Ry Strauss is dead, Lionel Underwood is dead, Lake Davies is alive. I still have three to go — Arlo Sugarman, Billy Rowan, Edie Parker.

There is another issue, a bigger issue, ablaze right now: Why has Leo Staunch decided to tell me this? Some may believe that this is a very bad sign for me, that now that I know the truth, Leo Staunch will have no choice but to kill me. I don’t believe that. Even if I was foolhardy enough to run to the feds, what could they do after all these years? What could they prove?

Moreover, if Leo Staunch’s plans include killing me, there would be no reason for the confession first.

“I assume,” I continue, “that you or your uncle asked Mr. Underwood about the whereabouts of the other Jane Street Six.”

He stares off behind me, unseeing. His eyes are shattered marbles. “We did more than ask.”

“And?”

“And he didn’t know.”

“Did he tell you anything else?”

“By the end,” Leo Staunch says in a hollow voice, “Lionel Underwood told us everything.”

He is flashing back to that time in the now-muffler shop. His face is losing color.

“Like what?”

“He didn’t throw a Molotov cocktail.”

“You believe him?”

“I do. He broke. Entirely. By the second day, he begged for death.” His eyes have tears; he blinks them away. “You want to know why I’m telling you this.”

I wait.

“For a while, I convinced myself I was okay with it. I got revenge for my sister. Maybe Lionel Underwood didn’t throw this explosive, but as my uncle reminded me, he’s still guilty. But I couldn’t sleep. Even now, all these years later, I still hear Lionel’s screams at night. I see his contorted face.” His eyes find mine. “I’m not afraid of violence, Mr. Lockwood. But this kind of, I don’t know, vigilantism, I guess...” He wipes one eye with a forefinger. “You want to know why I’m telling you this? Because I don’t want the same thing to happen to Arlo Sugarman. Whatever his sins, I want him captured and brought to trial. I lost my taste for revenge.” He leans closer to me. “The reason why I am asking you to find Arlo Sugarman is, so I can protect him.”

Do I believe this?

I do.

“One problem,” I say.

“Oh, there are more than one,” Leo says with the sad chuckle.

“My bank robber source was adamant. He sold you the information on Ry Strauss’s whereabouts.”

“You believe him?”

“I do.”

Leo Staunch considers this. “Did your source say that he sold the information to me — or did he say he sold it to a Staunch?”

I am about to reply when my gaze gets snagged on those handicap railings. I stare at them a second before I turn back to Leo. “You think he sold it to Uncle Nero?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your uncle had a stroke. He’s in a wheelchair.”

“Yes.”

“But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t hire someone to do the job.”

“I don’t think he did.”

“Then what?” I ask.

“Just find Arlo Sugarman.”

“What about the others?”

“When you find Arlo Sugarman,” Leo Staunch says, heading toward the door, “you’ll find all the answers.”

The Reverend Calvin Sinclair, graduate of Oral Roberts University and, if Elena Randolph is to be believed, onetime lover of Ralph Lewis aka Arlo Sugarman, exits the front door to St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church. He walks a British bulldog on a ropy leash. They say that pet owners oft look like their pets, and that seems to be the case here. Both Calvin Sinclair and his bulldog companion are squat, portly-yet-powerful, with a wrinkled face and a pushed-in nose.

St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church is located on a surprisingly large plot of land in Creve Coeur, Missouri, part of Greater St. Louis. The sign out front tells me that services are Saturday at 5:00 p.m., Sunday at 7:45—9:00–10:45 a.m. In smaller print, it notes that prayer services will be led by “Father Calvin” or “Mother Sally.”

The Reverend Sinclair spots me as I get out of the back of a black car. With his free hand, he shields his eyes. He looks to be his age — sixty-five — with thin wisps of hair on his scalp. When he’d opened the church door, he wore a practiced wide smile, the kind of thing you put on just in case someone is around and you want to appear kind and friendly, which — who am I to judge yet? — Calvin Sinclair may very well be. When he sees me, however, the smile crumbles to dust. He adjusts his wire spectacles.