No Safe House by Linwood Barclay
“Don’t push me, Terry.”
“Look, I’m not an idiot. I know what you do and what you’re capable of. Your band of merry men could haul me out of here and I’d never be seen again. So, okay, you’re an intimidating son of a bitch, but I’m not the same guy you met seven years ago. You and I have a history, Vince, and I’m saying that warrants some mutual respect. Yeah, you helped Cynthia and me, and you got shot and now you wear that bag. I’m sorry. You want pity? I can’t imagine that. It’s beneath you. We’re all scarred, one way or another.”
I took a breath.
“I think you know what happened in that house tonight. Not all of it, obviously, or I wouldn’t be sitting here. You want me to answer your questions? Then you answer mine. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
Vince glowered at me for several seconds, then pushed back his chair, took four steps over to the kitchen counter, grabbed two shot glasses from the cupboard and a bottle of scotch, put them on the table in front of me, and sat back down. He splashed some brown liquid into each glass and shoved one toward me. He knocked his back before I’d touched mine.
I hate scotch.
But this seemed to be a peace offering, so I put it to my lips and downed half, doing my best not to make the face I made when I was four and my parents made me eat a brussels sprout.
Vince sighed. “Let’s say I have an interest in that house where . . . Grace was tonight.”
“What kind of interest?” I asked.
“You might already know. That’s why I needed to talk to you.”
I waited.
“And if you don’t already know, it’d be better to keep it that way. Believe me when I tell you, that’s for your sake, and your daughter’s.”
“But it’s not your house,” I said. “You don’t own it.”
“I do not.”
“It’s about the boy,” I said.
Vince nodded.
“Stuart Koch,” I said. “You know this kid?”
“I do.”
“How?” I asked.
Vince weighed whether to answer, then probably figured that if I didn’t already know, it wouldn’t be a difficult thing to find out. “He’s one of my guys’ kids. Eldon. You might remember him. Bald guy, gave you a lift when you came to visit me here before.”
I remembered. I hadn’t known his name, but I remembered the bald guy as one of the ones who’d tossed me into a car to bring me to my first meeting with Vince. So I had taught the son of one of Vince’s thugs.
Small world.
“Eldon’s been raising Stuart on his own for several years now, ever since his wife left him for a Hells Angel and moved to California, and doing a lousy job of it. Lets the kid get away with all kinds of shit and doesn’t know where he is most of the time.”
“Where’s Stuart now?”
“He’s being taken care of.”
“So he’s okay?”
Vince hesitated. “Like I said.”
I didn’t know how to interpret that. I wanted to believe it meant Stuart was alive, and that if he had been shot in that house, he was on the mend. Somewhere.
“Grace would like to talk to him. So she knows he’s okay,” I said.
“Great,” Vince said. “Let’s get her up here. Then I can ask her some questions, face-to-face, at the same time.”
I did not want Grace talking to this man.
“I’ll talk to him myself,” I said. “Pass on a message to Grace.”
“Would you recognize his voice? Would you really know it was him?”
I wasn’t sure, after all this time, whether I’d know Stuart’s voice on the phone. But I could ask him questions about when he was in my class. Then I’d know.
“I’d give it a shot,” I said.
“I’m trying to be nice, Terry. I’m showing you a courtesy. If I want to talk to your kid, there’s not a damn thing you’ll be able to do to stop me. But I talked to Jane, and she thought it’d be better to talk to her for me. And I went along with that. You want to keep it that way?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then help me out. What’d she tell you?”
I decided to tell him what I could.
“This Koch boy wanted to take the Porsche that was in the garage at that house for a spin. His plan was to break in, find a key, take the joyride, then return the car.”
“And that was the only reason?”
“Yes.”
“Grace didn’t mention anything else?”
I blinked. “What other reason would there be?” The only thing I could think of was sex. But there were a million places a couple of horny teenagers could make out. They’d hardly need to take the risks that came with breaking into a house. To my mind, the Porsche was the prize.
“You tell me,” Vince said.
“That’s what Grace told me. It was about taking the car. So you tell me. Why else would Stuart want to break in there?”
“Where’d they go in the house?”
I replayed Grace’s story in my head at fast-forward. “They were in the basement. They came up to the first floor. They were standing around the entrance to the kitchen when they thought they heard something. Stuart went to check it out, a shot went off, and Grace got the hell out of there.”
“A shot went off,” Vince repeated.
“Yeah.”
“And who fired this shot?”
“Grace isn’t sure,” I said.
“What’s that mean?” Vince asked.
“Like I said.”
Vince gave me a look.
“Did Stuart bring a gun?” Vince asked.
“Grace said he got one out of the car. His father’s car. So that’d be your Eldon. I guess he kept a gun in the glove box.”
“So this shot that was fired, it could have been Stuart that fired it?”
I didn’t like where this was headed. “I don’t think so,” I said slowly.
Vince raised the bottle of scotch. “Another?”
I held my palm over the glass. “I’m good.”
He refilled his. “Terry, I understand there’s shit you don’t want to tell me, that you’re trying to protect your kid. I get that. I’m not out to get Grace. But I need to know what happened, and you being all dodgy with your answers, that’s not helping. That’s not good for you, or your kid.”
When I said nothing, he continued. “There’s stuff I already know you probably think I don’t. Grace has already talked to Jane. I’m not talking about now. I’m talking about earlier. Your kid called Jane soon as she got out of the house, told her she was scared shitless she might have shot Stuart. Jane’s known Stuart for eight, nine years, ever since her mom and I hooked up, and Jane got to know the people who work for me and the members of their families. Grace said Stuart gave her the gun to hold on to. That sound about right to you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What else did she say?”
I swallowed. My mouth was dry, but I still didn’t want the scotch. “I think she blanked out. She doesn’t know what happened in that house. She’d never even held a gun before and when she heard the shot wondered if somehow she’d made the gun go off. I asked her if it had kicked back, you know, recoiled, and she couldn’t remember one way or another. And one more thing.”
Vince waited.
“She doesn’t have the gun. She doesn’t know what she did with it. She thinks she dropped it in the house, but I didn’t see it.”
His eyebrows went up. “You were in the house.”
I nodded.
“You went in through the broken window?”
I nodded.
“What did you see?”
“Some blood. A trace. In the kitchen.”
“Shit,” he said. “We’ll have to do a more thorough cleanup. It’s amazing we got done as much as we did in the time we had. We’ll do it when we go back to fix the window. The people who live there won’t be returning until next week. There’s time.”
I wondered how much blood wa
“Did Grace see anyone else in the house?” he asked.
“She said she thought someone ran past her.”
“She get a look at him?”
I shook my head. “No.” Something Grace had said came back to me. “The security system wasn’t engaged.”
“Huh?”
“They went to all the trouble to break in through a basement window, but Grace said the light on the security keypad by the door was green.”
Vince looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth. While he was trying to make sense of that, I was trying to figure out what must have happened after Grace phoned Jane.
I said, “Jane had to have called you right after she heard from Grace. Stuart being Eldon’s son, she knew you had to be her first call. So you and your boys rushed in to cover things up, clean up the scene, make like none of this ever happened.”
Vince said nothing.
“But there’s more going on than just some stupid teenage shenanigans, isn’t there? More than an aborted joyride.”
Still nothing.
“Vince, level with me.”
“We’re done,” he said. He poured the remaining contents of his shot glass down his throat and pushed back his chair.
“No,” I said. “We’re not. I don’t know if we should be going to the hospital to look for Stuart, or to the police, or try to track down this gun, or—”
“Fuck!” Vince said, kicking over his chair as he stood. “You think you’ve gotten tough but you’re the same pussy you were when I first met you. Listen to me and listen good. You will do none of those things. You will not go looking for Stuart. Not at the hospital and not anyplace else. You will not go to the police. You will not call some fucking lawyer. You will not go to that fucking woman from that Deadline TV show and tell your life story again. You will go home and you will forget any of this ever happened.”
He’d come around the table and was jabbing a short, stubby index finger to within an inch of my nose.
“You will get up tomorrow morning and go about your day like it was any other day, and if you’re smart, you and Grace won’t even talk about any of this ever again. She won’t say a word to her friends. She won’t try to get in touch with Stuart. Far as she’s concerned, she never even met the kid. You know why? Because it didn’t happen. None of this happened. And you won’t be keeping your mouth shut just for me. You’ll be keeping your mouth shut for your kid.”
When I didn’t say anything, he asked, “Am I getting through?”
“I hear ya,” I said.
“Hearin’s not enough. I gotta know you’re on board. I have enough on my plate right now without having to be concerned about what you might do.”
“I need to know if the kid is okay,” I said. “I need to know what happened to Stuart.”
“No, you don’t,” Vince said. “You don’t have to worry about him. Because—and you worry me, Terry, because you seem to have some kind of comprehension problem—Grace doesn’t even know him. Remember that part? She’s never even heard of him.”
“What if the police come around, asking about what happened at the house?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“But it might,” I insisted.
“I told you, you’re not saying anything, because you want to do everything you can to protect your little girl.”
“Don’t threaten my daughter, Vince.”
“I’m putting myself in your place. You want to do what’s best for her. And you seem to be forgetting something, Terry.”
“What?”
“The gun.”
That got my attention. “What about the gun?”
“Maybe the reason you didn’t find it is because it’s already been found.”
I waited.
“We know for sure your daughter’s fingerprints are on it. But did that gun go off? Did it hit somebody? Let’s say the answer’s yes, on both counts. Just for the sake of argument. Then that becomes a very special gun. That’s what you call a smoking gun in every sense of the word. A gun the police would like to get their hands on. Well, right now, I can make sure that never happens. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna get rid of it. It means I’m going to keep it for insurance. You don’t know whether that gun’s bad news for your kid or not, but you’re a lot better off if it never surfaces, now, aren’t you?”
I said nothing.
“You take your girl home and you read her a nice story and tuck her in and give her a little kiss good night from me.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“IT’S gonna be okay, Grace,” Jane said, sitting behind the wheel of the Mini. “Vince’ll know what to do.”
Grace, teary eyed, was unconvinced. “I know I’m going to go to jail. I’m going to go to jail and I won’t get out until I’m, like, fifty or something.”
Jane took Grace’s hand and squeezed it. “No way. That’s not going to happen. I know it’s, like, impossible to tell you to stop worrying, but everything’ll work out. You wait. Vince wouldn’t have lasted as long as he has if he didn’t know how to get out of these situations.”
Grace sniffed. “Doesn’t it bug you?”
“What?”
“That he’s, you know, like, the Mafia or something.”
Jane shook her head. “He’s not Mafia.”
“But he’s a criminal, right? And he has a gang? And Stuart’s dad is one of the people in his gang?”
Jane sighed. “Look, I’m not proud of any of this, okay? But calling Vince and Eldon and Bert and Gordie a gang, it makes them sound like a bunch of teenagers on motorcycles going around terrorizing the neighborhood. What they are is a business. That’s all. A different kind of business, but that’s what it is.”
“But he’s a criminal.”
Jane shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”
“So, like, how do you deal with that? I mean, there are days I’m totally ashamed of my dad, and he’s just a teacher.”
“Just because he does bad things doesn’t mean he’s a totally bad person. Look, this is who he is, and this is what his father did. He’s got good in him, even if, lately, he and I are kind of . . .”
“Kind of what?”
“I don’t know. Since my mom died, it hasn’t been the same with him, and that’s okay, you know? I’m not a kid anymore, and I don’t need a father figure in my life every day. But right now, the guy’s in a bind, and he needs your dad’s help, and your help, too.”
“Help to find out what happened, or help to cover everything up?”
Jane looked at her straight on. “Both.”
“If I did something wrong, I have to pay the price for it,” Grace said. “I have to do the right thing.”
“Sometimes doing the right thing is complicated.”
“A few weeks ago,” Grace said slowly, “my mom and I had a fight.” She wiped her eyes. “I didn’t tell you about this.”
“What kind of fight?”
“You remember you asked about this mark on my hand?” Grace showed her.
“Yeah. You said you accidentally burned it.”
“My mom pushed me and my hand hit a pot on the stove. It was kind of both our faults, but if she hadn’t pushed me, it wouldn’t have happened. I had to go to the hospital and my mom told me to tell them the truth, that it was her fault, and if that meant they had to call the police, then that’s the way it would have to be.”
Jane took Grace’s hand and gently squeezed it. “Wow. So what did you do?”
“I told them I was just goofing around, that I was dancing, and my arm hit the pot.”
“You covered for her.”
Grace nodded. “Yeah, but she was willing to pay for her mistake. She was willing to do the right thing.”
“But you didn’t let her, because you love her too much to let that happen. That’s kind of what’s happening now. I care about you, and Vince, well, he cares about the people he’s got around him, and we’d
“I don’t know,” Grace said.
Jane took a breath. “Okay, the first thing we have to do is figure out what really went down. You need to remember everything you can about what happened in the house. You heard a shot. Maybe it was you. Maybe it was somebody else. But you need to remember. Did you see anybody, other than Stuart?”
“No. I mean, I think someone ran past me. But I didn’t see anybody.”
“You’re sure?”
Grace nodded.
“Okay, but even if you didn’t see anyone, maybe you heard something or, I don’t know, smelled something. Maybe there’s something you noticed without even realizing it. Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Just close them,” Jane said. “Put yourself back in that house, after the shot.”
“I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to think about it.”
“Grace, here’s the thing. You’re going to be thinking about this and thinking about this for a long time, whether you want to or not, so you might as well do it now and try to learn something. Okay?”
“I guess.” Grace closed her eyes.
“After the shot, what do you hear?”
“I’m screaming.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m going, ‘Stuart! Stuart!’ Like that.”
“And what does he say?”
“He’s not saying anything.”
“But you hear something?”
Grace tried to close her eyes more tightly. “I hear steps.”
“Okay, that’s good. Fast steps, slow steps?”
“Kind of—running? It’s not hard steps, like if someone was wearing dress shoes. It’s kind of soft and squeaky. Like maybe running shoes.”
Jane smiled encouragingly, even though Grace couldn’t see her. “That’s good. So someone was running, getting away. You think it was Stuart? You think he ran off and just decided to leave you there? Maybe you accidentally pulled the trigger, or there was someone else there with a gun, and he got scared and ran?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Grace said, opening her eyes. “Would he?”
Jane gave her a pitying look. “Gracie, honey, please. I know these characters. Vince is solid, but the rest, and their kids—I mean, I thought I was just an idiot in school when I was there, but I was a Rhodes scholar by comparison.”