“I am innocent of everything,” said Gregor.

“Yes,” said Sims, eyeing him up and down. “You look like an innocent. What should we do with this piece of trash, Hanratty?”

“Take him in,” said Hanratty, “put him in the box, ship him FedEx to Brussels.”

“You have no jurisdiction,” said Gregor.

“Maybe not, but Immigration does. When I talked to them this evening, they seemed quite interested in your case. They were already looking for you. Apparently, you didn’t inform them of any criminal problems on your visa application. They are making a recommendation to the FBI tomorrow.”

“Let’s hold him until then,” said Hanratty.

“If only we could,” said Sims. “If only we could.”

“But I assume from your tone of regret that you can’t,” said Gregor. “So that is it, then. Off we go. It was an experience being introduced to you both. I will be in touch, Victor.”

“Enjoy your meeting,” I said.

“I intend to. Come, Sandro.”

Gregor, with a hurry-up hitch in his stride, headed for the door, Sandro right behind.

“Oh, Mr. Trocek,” said Sims. “One more thing.”

Gregor stopped, turned around. His hands trembled, as if he were straining to keep them from wringing Sims’s neck.

“If I see you again,” said Sims, “I’ll shoot you in the face.”

Trocek stood there for a moment, staring back at Sims, before the slightest smile broke beneath the thatch of his beard. Something burst to life between them just then, some spark, containing in its charge a combustible mixture of greed and violence. I sensed that someday soon Sims and Trocek would meet again, and two of my problems might disappear all at once.

When Gregor left, Sims turned to me. “Quite a disreputable crowd you’re hanging out with,” he said.

“Not by choice,” I said. “Very little that has happened to me as of late has been by choice. Take you two guys always popping in uninvited. Before we chat, do you mind if I go into my bedroom and get a new shirt? This one is a little worse for wear.”

“Yes, we do mind,” said Hanratty as he reached into his jacket pocket, took out a pair of blue rubber gloves, slipped them onto his huge hands.

“What are you doing? My prostate is fine.”

Sims pulled a document from his overcoat and waved it once before putting it away. “We have a warrant. Hanratty’s going to search your bedroom. Relax, Victor. This won’t take long.”

“That’s what they say when they check your prostate.”

While Hanratty disappeared into my bedroom, I sat down on the edge of the couch, leaning forward, one hand still clutching the shirt to my chest. Sims sat with a certain ease in my easy chair, leaning back comfortably, one leg crossed over the other.

“I’d ask about your shirt and the blood,” said Sims, “but I try not to get into people’s sexual practices unless absolutely necessary.”

“This has nothing to do with-”

“Not yet, Victor. We’ll talk, we’ll have quite the conversation, but not just yet.”

“What kind of-”

“Shhhh,” said Sims. “Save it all for later. For now let Hanratty do his work.”

From my bedroom came the sound of clothes rustling, of furniture being moved, of objects being tossed carelessly about. Something shattered against a wall. Sims didn’t so much as flinch.

“Can I see the warrant at least?” I said.

“No.”

“But the law says-”

“I know what the law says,” said Sims. “Just be patient. Everything will come clear, one way or the other, soon enough.”

And soon enough it did. From the doorway to my bedroom appeared Hanratty, a crooked smile on his stalwart face. And in one hand, still sheathed in blue rubber, he held out, like a magician displaying a startled rabbit pulled from his hat, a plastic bag.

And inside the plastic bag was a gun, big and shiny, and though I had never seen it before, I knew right away which gun, of all the guns in the world, was this gun and whom it had killed.

It’s hard to parse the swirling swill of emotions I felt at that very moment. There was the inevitable shock, though how I could have been shocked was a mystery. And there was anger, a generalized anger at the bastards who had set up the frame and the two cops who were walking right through it. And there was fear, yes, fear that after all the crimes and misdemeanors in my life, I was being caught at something I hadn’t done. The UPS guy always rings twice, I suppose. And let’s not forget the sadness, too, yes, of course, I admit it, sadness at the past that was obliterated and the future altered by the sheen of the gun’s silvery barrel.

But most of all, and this may be the truest revelation of this whole sordid tale, even as I felt the frame of guilt close in on me, what I felt surging through me at the sight of that gun, planted in my bedroom by my old lost love, was a great heaving sense of relief.

40

“What are you going to do now?” I said, my jaw tight with dread. Whatever relief I felt at the vision of Julia disappearing from my future was suddenly overwhelmed by visions of prison bars taking her place.

“We’re going to book you for illegal possession of a firearm,” said Sims as he calmly straightened out the fabric on his pant leg. “And when the tests show conclusively that your gun killed Dr. Denniston, we’re going to book you and hold you without bail until a grand jury indicts you for murder.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“Save it,” said Hanratty. “The judge might care, we don’t.”

“Hanratty,” said Sims, “why don’t you go down to the car and call in what we found. Maybe see if anything else has popped up that we should know about.”

“I could call from here,” said Hanratty.

“I know, but do it from the car. Leave me a few minutes alone with Victor.”

Hanratty stared at the back of Sims’s head for a moment, his stone features hardening, then put the gun in his pocket and stalked out the door. Sims and I sat there for a while in silence. Sims had something to say, but he wanted me to wait and stew a bit first. Except I had done enough stewing and waiting that night.

“The gun was planted,” I said.

“Probably,” said Sims.

“I know who killed him,” I said. “I can prove it.”

“You can prove it? Really? That’s so encouraging for you.”

“Don’t you want to know who killed the doctor?”

“Not really. I have you here, now, and that’s all I need. The young and pretty wife naked in your bed. You, as always, hoping for a big payday. The fingerprint. The letter you wrote as Miles Cave. The gun in your apartment. Open and shut, Victor. Open and shut. We’ll check Dr. Denniston off the board and move on. When the grand jury rubber-stamps the indictment, we’ll hold you for a year or two, depending on delays, until your trial. By then, with the help of a few cooperating witnesses from the prison, we’ll have more than enough evidence to throw at a jury. And won’t the prosecutor have fun waving the gun in his closing?”

I closed my eyes, imagined it all, felt the quease rise in me. “But I have a witness.”

“Good for you. And you can present him at the trial, if he doesn’t disappear before then. Like Mrs. Denniston’s alibi witness disappeared.”

I snapped my eyes open. “You chased him away on purpose.”

“Now, why would I do something like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I suspect I’m about to find out.”

“I wanted to help you from the first, Victor, remember? But you were all about attitude and nothing about gratitude. I felt only a smart-alecky disdain from you. Quite insulting. But the worm turns, doesn’t it? And now all I see is your soft underbelly. And so here we are. You with the murder weapon in your bedroom, me with a prime suspect. See how neatly it works? But I’m still willing to help.”

“What do you want?”

“To see justice done,” he said.

He stared at me briefly, and then he started laughing, and I couldn’t help but laugh, too. His laughter was full of merriment and mirth, mine was full of bitterness and dread, but there we were, laughing together at the idea that justice had any place in the discussion we then were having. And in that laughter I caught my first glimpse of a route out of the cage of guilt that had been hammered into place around me.