Fade Away (1996) (36 page)

'Before you get any cute ideas,' the voice behind the flashlight said, 'take a look at this.'

The voice put a gun in front of the flashlight.

Another voice said, 'Sixty bucks? That's fuckin' all? Shit.'

Myron felt the wallet hit him in the chest.

'Put your hands behind your back.'

He did as the voice asked. Someone grabbed the forearms, pulling them closer together, tearing at the shoulder tendons. A pair of handcuffs were snapped on his wrists.

'Leave us,' the voice said. Myron heard the rustling movements. The air cleared. Myron heard a door open, but the flashlight in his eyes prevented him from seeing anything. Silence followed. After some time passed, the voice said, 'Sorry to do this to you, Myron. They'll let you go in a few hours.'

'How long you going to keep running, Cole?'

Cole Whiteman chuckled. 'Been running a long time,' he said. 'I'm used to it.'

I'm not here to stop you.'

'Imagine my relief,' he said. 'So how did you figure out who I was?'

'It's not important,' Myron said.

'It is to me.'

I don't have any interest in bringing you down,' Myron said. I just want some information.'

There was a pause. Myron blinked into the light. 'How did you get involved in all this?' Cole asked.

'Greg Downing vanished. I was hired to find him.'

'You?'

'Yes.'

Cole Whiteman laughed deep and hearty. The sound bounced around like balls of Silly Putty, the volume reaching a frightening crescendo before mercifully fading away.

'What's so funny?' Myron asked.

'Inside joke.' Cole stood, the flashlight rising with him. 'Look, I have to go. I'm sorry.'

More silence. Cole flicked off the flashlight, plunging Myron back into total blackness. He heard footsteps receding.

'Don't you want to know who killed Liz Gorman?' Myron called out.

The footsteps continued unimpeded. Myron heard a switch and a dim lightbulb came on. Maybe forty watts. It didn't come close to fully illuminating the place, but it was a hell of an improvement. Myron blinked away black spots left over from the flashlight assault and examined his surroundings. The room was jammed with marble statues, lined and piled up without reason or logic, some tilted over. It wasn't a tomb, after all. It was some bizarre, church-art storage room.

Cole Whiteman came back over to him. He sat cross-legged directly in front of Myron. The white stubble was still there - thick in some spots, completely missing in others. His hair jutted up and out in every direction.

He lowered the gun to his side.

'I want to know how Liz died,' he said softly.

'She was bludgeoned with a baseball bat,' Myron said.

Cole's eyes closed. 'Who did it?'

'That's what I'm trying to find out. Right now, Greg Downing is the main suspect.'

Cole Whiteman shook his head. 'He wasn't there long enough.'

Myron felt a knot in his stomach. He tried to lick his lips but his mouth was too dry. 'You were there?'

'Across the street behind a garbage can. Like Oscar the fucking Grouch.'

His lips smiled, but there was nothing behind it. 'You want no one to notice you? Pretend you're homeless.' He stood up in one fluid motion, like some kind of yoga master. 'A baseball bat,' he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose, turned away, and lowered his chin to his chest. Myron could hear small sobs.

'Help me find her killer, Cole.'

'Why the fuck should I trust you?'

'Me or the police,' Myron said. 'It's up to you.'

That slowed him. 'The cops won't do shit. They think she's a murderer.'

'Then help me,' Myron said.

He sat back down on the floor and inched a bit closer to Myron. 'We're not murderers, you know. The government labeled us that and now everyone believes it. But it's not true. You understand?'

Myron nodded. 'I understand.'

Cole gave him a hard look. 'You patronizing me?'

'No.'

'Don't patronize me,' Cole said. 'You want me to stay and talk, don't you dare patronize me. You stay honest - I'll stay honest.'

'Fine,' Myron said. 'But then don't hand me the "we're not killers, we're freedom fighters" line. I'm not in the mood for a verse of "Blowin" in the Wind."'

'You think that's what I'm talking about?'

'You're not being prosecuted by a corrupt government,' Myron said.

'You kidnapped and killed a man, Cole. You can dress it up in all the fancy language you want, but that's what you did.'

Cole almost smiled. 'You really believe that.'

'Wait, don't tell me; let me guess,' Myron said. He feigned looking up in thought. 'The government brainwashed me, right? This whole thing has been a CIA plot to crush a dozen college students who threatened to undermine our government.'

'No,' he said. 'But we didn't kill Hunt.'

'Who did?'

Cole hesitated. He looked up and blinked back what looked like tears.

'Hunt shot himself.'

His reddening eyes looked to Myron for a reaction. Myron remained still.

'The kidnapping was a hoax,' Cole went on. 'The whole thing was Hunt's idea. He wanted to hurt his old man so he figured what better way than to take his money and then embarrass the shit out of him? But then those assholes surprised us and Hunt chose another revenge.' Cole's breathing grew deep and erratic. 'He ran outside with the gun. He screamed, "Fuck you, Dad." Then he blew his own head off.'

Myron said nothing.

'Look at our history,' Cole Whiteman said, his voice a semiplea. 'We were a harmless group of stragglers. We protested at antiwar rallies. We got stoned a lot. We never committed one act of violence. None of us even had a gun, except for Hunt. He was my roommate and best friend. I could never hurt him.'

Myron didn't know what to believe; more to the point, he didn't have time now to worry about a twenty-year-old homicide. He waited for Cole to continue, to let him talk out the past, but Cole remained still. Finally, Myron tried to update the subject. 'You saw Greg Downing go into Liz Gorman's building?'

Cole nodded slowly.

'She was blackmailing him?'

'Not just her,' he corrected. 'It was my idea.'

'What did you have on Greg?'

Cole shook his head. 'Not important.'

'She was probably killed over it.'

'Probably,' Cole agreed. 'But you don't need to know the specifics. Trust me.'

Myron was in no position to push it. 'Tell me about the night of the murder.'

Cole scratched at his stubble hard, like a cat on a post. 'Like I said,' he began, I was across the street. When you live underground, you have certain rules you live by -- rules that have kept us alive and free for the last twenty years. One of them is that after we commit a crime, we never stay together. The feds look for us in groups, not individuals. Since we've been in the city, Liz and I have made sure we were never together. We only communicated by phone.'

'What about Gloria Katz and Susan Milano?' Myron asked. 'Where are they?'

Cole smiled without mirth or humor. Myron saw the missing teeth and wondered if they were part of the disguise or something more sinister. I'll tell you about them another time,' he said.

Myron nodded. 'Go on,' he said.

The lines in Cole's face seemed to deepen and darken in the bare light. He took his time before continuing. 'Liz was all packed and ready to go,' he said finally. 'We were going to score the cash and get out of the city, just like I planned. I was just waiting across the street for her signal.'

'What signal?'

'After all the money was collected, she'd flicker the lights three times.

That meant she'd be down in ten minutes. We were going to meet at One Hundred Sixteenth Street and take the One train out of here. But the signal never came. In fact, her light never went off at all. I was afraid to go check on her for obvious reasons. We got rules about that, too.'

'Who was Liz supposed to collect from that night?'

'Three people,' Cole said, holding up the pointer, middle man, and ring man. 'Greg Downing' - he dropped ring man - 'his wife what'sher-name--

'Emily.'

'Right, Emily.' The middle finger went down. 'And the old guy who owns the Dragons.' His hand made a fist now.

Myron's heart contracted. 'Wait a second,' he said. 'Clip Arnstein was supposed to show up?'

'Not supposed to,' Cole corrected. 'He did.'

A back coldness seeped into Myron's bones. 'Clip was there?'

'Yes.'

'And the other two?'

'All three showed up. But that wasn't the plan. Liz was supposed to meet Downing at a bar downtown. They were going to make the transaction there.'

'A place called the Swiss Chalet?'

'Right.'

'But Greg showed up at the apartment too?'

'Later on, yeah. But Clip Arnstein arrived first.'

Win's warning about Clip came back to him. You like him too much.

You're not being objective. 'How much was Clip supposed to pay?'

'Thirty thousand dollars.'

'The police only found ten thousand in her apartment,' Myron said. 'And those bills were from the bank robbery.'

Cole shrugged. 'Either the old man didn't pay her or else the killer took the money.' Then, thinking it through a little more he added, 'Or maybe Clip Arnstein killed her. But he seems kind of old, don't you think?'

Myron didn't answer. 'How long was he inside?'

'Ten, fifteen minutes.'

'Who came by next?'

'Greg Downing. I remember he had a satchel. I figured it had the money in it. He was in and out fast - couldn't have been more than a minute. And he still had the satchel on him when he came out. That's when I started to worry.'

'Greg could have killed her,' Myron said. 'It doesn't take long to hit someone with a baseball bat.'

'But he wasn't carrying a bat,' Cole said. 'The satchel wasn't big enough for one. And Liz had a bat in her apartment. She hated guns, so she kept it for protection.'

Myron knew that no bat had been found at Gorman's apartment. That meant the killer must have used Liz's. Could Greg have gone upstairs, entered her apartment, found the bat, killed her with it, run out - all in such a short time?

It seemed doubtful.

'What about Emily?' Myron asked.

'She came in last,' Cole said.

'How long was she there?'

'Five minutes. Something like that.'

Time enough to gather the evidence to plant. 'Did you see anybody else go in and out of the building?'

'Sure,' Cole said. 'Lots of students live there.'

'But we can assume that Liz was already dead by the time Greg Downing arrived, right?'

'Right.'

'So the question is, who do you remember going in between the time she got back from the Swiss Chalet and the time Greg arrived? Besides Clip Arnstein.'

Cole thought about it and shrugged. 'Mostly students, I guess. There was a real tall guy--

'How tall?'

'I don't know. Very.'

I'm six-four. Taller than me?'

'Yeah, I think so.'

'Was he black?'

'I don't know. I was across the street and the light wasn't too good. I wasn't watching that closely. He might have been black. But I don't think he's our man.'

'Why do you say that?'

I watched the building until the next morning. He never came back out.

He must have lived there or at least stayed with someone overnight. I doubt the killer would've hung around like that.'

Tough to argue, Myron thought. He tried to process what he was hearing in a cold, computerlike way, but the circuits were starting to overload.

'Who else did you remember seeing? Anybody stand out?'

Cole thought again, his eyes wandering aimlessly. 'There was one woman who went in not long before Greg got there. Now that I think of it, she left before he got there too.'

'What did she look like?'

'I don't remember.'

'Blonde, brunette?'

Cole shook his head. 'I only remember her because she wore a long coat.

The students all wear windbreakers or sweat shirts or something like that. I remember thinking she looked like an adult.'

'Was she carrying anything? Did she--

'Look, Myron, I'm sorry. I gotta get moving.' He stood and looked down at Myron with a hollow, lost expression. 'Good luck finding the son of a bitch,' he said. 'Liz was a good person. She never hurt anyone. None of us did.'

Before he could turn away, Myron asked, 'Why did you call me last night?

What were you going to sell me?'

Cole smiled sadly and began to walk away. He stopped before he reached the door and turned back around. 'I'm alone now,' he said. 'Gloria Katz was shot in the initial attack. She died three months later. Susan Milano died in a car crash in 1982. Liz and I kept their deaths a secret. We wanted the feds searching for four of us, not two. We thought it would help us stay hidden.