Live Wire
Crisp searched for a way out. Win waited, seeming to enjoy the moment. Win had cornered his prey and now it was as though he were playing with it.
“Help!” Crisp yelled. “They shot Herman!”
“Please.” Win looked bored. “That won’t do any good.”
Crisp’s eyes widened in confusion, but Myron saw it. There was only one way Win could have gotten that weapon: He had inside help.
Beefy.
Beefy had put the gun in Win’s sweat suit.
Win raised the barrel so that it pointed at Crisp’s forehead. “Any final words?” Crisp’s eyes darted like scattered birds. He spun his head around, hoping to find a reprieve in Myron. And then, looking up at Myron, Crisp made one last desperate move: “I saved your godson’s life.”
Even Win seemed to catch his breath. Myron moved closer to Crisp, bent down so that they were face-to-face. “What are you talking about?”
“We had a good thing going,” Crisp said. “We were all making a lot of money and, really, who were we hurting? And then Lex gets religion and ruins it. After all the years, why the hell did he open his mouth to Suzze? How did he think Herman would react to that?”
“So you were sent to silence her,” Myron said.
Crisp nodded. “So I flew into Jersey City. I waited in the garage and grabbed her when she parked. I put my gun against her belly and made her take the stairs. There are no security cameras there. It took a while. When we got up to the penthouse, I told her to overdose on the heroin or, pow, I’d shoot her in the head. I wanted to make it look like an accident or suicide. I could do it with the gun, but it would be easier with the drugs. With her past, the cops would buy an OD easy.”
“But Suzze wouldn’t shoot up,” Myron said.
“That’s right. Suzze wanted to make a deal instead.”
Myron could almost see it now. Suzze with the gun on her, not blinking. He’d been right. She wouldn’t just kill herself. She wouldn’t obey an order like that, even at gunpoint. “What kind of deal?”
Crisp risked a glance back at Win. He knew that Win wasn’t bluffing, that Win had concluded that it would be too dangerous to let Crisp live. Still, no matter what the odds, man scrambles to survive. This revelation was Crisp’s version of the last-second Hail Mary pass, his attempt to show enough humanity so that Myron would persuade Win not to pull the trigger.
Myron remembered the 9-1-1 call from the accented maintenance man. “Suzze agreed to overdose on the heroin,” Myron said, “if you called nine-one-one.”
Crisp nodded.
How had he not seen it before? You couldn’t force Suzze to take the heroin. She too would scramble to save her life. Except under one condition.
“Suzze would do what you asked,” Myron went on, “under the condition that you gave her child a chance to live.”
“Yes,” Crisp said. “We made a deal. I promised to make the call the moment she shot up.”
Myron’s heart broke anew. He could almost see Suzze coming to the realization that if she were shot in the head, her unborn son would die with her. So yes, she had scrambled, not to save herself, but to save her child. Somehow she had found a way. It was risky. If she died from the overdose right away, so might the baby. But at least it gave him a chance. Suzze probably knew how heroin overdoses work, how they slowly shut down the system, that there would be time.
“And you kept your promise?”
“Yes.”
Myron asked the obvious question: “Why?”
Crisp shrugged and countered with: “Why not? There was no reason to kill an innocent baby if I didn’t have to.”
The morals of a killer. So now Myron knew. They had come here for answers. There was only one more he needed now. “Tell me about my brother.”
“I told you already. I don’t know anything about that.”
“You went after Kitty.”
“Sure. Once she came back and started making noise, we tried to find her. But I don’t know a thing about your brother. I swear.”
With those last words, Win pulled the trigger and shot Evan Crisp in the head. Myron jumped back, startled by the sound. Blood oozed out onto the oriental carpet as the body slumped to the ground. Win did a quick check, but there was no need for a second shot. Herman Ache and Evan Crisp were both dead.
“Us or them,” Win said.
Myron just stared. “So now what?”
“Now,” Win said, “you go to your father.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t worry about it. You may not see me for a while. But I’ll be fine.”
“What do you mean, not see you for a while? You’re not taking the heat for this alone.”
“Yes, I am.”
“But I’m here too.”
“No, you’re not. I’ve taken care of it. Take my car. I’ll find a way to communicate but you won’t see me for a while.”
Myron wanted to argue, but he knew it would only delay and possibly endanger the inevitable.
“How long?”
“I don’t know. We had no choice here. There was no way these two would have let us live. You have to see that.”
Myron did. He also saw now why Win hadn’t told him. Myron would have looked for another way when, in truth, there wasn’t one. When Win visited Frank Ache in prison, they promised to exchange favors. Win had made good on it and saved them in the process.
“Go,” Win said. “It’s over now.”
Myron shook his head. “It’s not over,” he said. “Not until I find Brad.”
“Crisp was telling the truth,” Win said. “Whatever danger your brother was in, it had nothing to do with this.”
“I know,” Myron said.
They had come here for answers and now Myron thought that maybe he really did know them all.
“Go,” Win said.
Myron hugged Win. Win hugged back. The hug was fierce and tight and lasted a long time. No words were exchanged—they would have just been superfluous. But Myron remembered what Win had said after Suzze first came to his office looking for help, about our tendency to think good things will last forever. They don’t. We think that we will always be young, that the moments and people we cherish are everlasting. But they’re not. As Myron held his friend in his arms, he knew that nothing would ever be the same between them. Something in their relationship had changed. Something was gone forever.