The boy turned, mouth curled with contempt. "Yeah? Hot shit! "
Janek flashed his shield. "Get lost, kid."
The boy dropped the receiver, took off down the avenue. Just as Janek replaced it, the phone rang.
"It's me," Clury said. "Put that tape recorder away. Otherwise I don't talk."
He's near. He can see me.
Janek obeyed.
"You're a clever cop, Janek. Gotta admire the way you put the scare into Janet. Your guy was behind her, right?"
"Something like that," Janek agreed.
"Well, it ain't worth shit, Detective, because you got nothing but a middle-aged cop who decided to drop out of the game. A cop who got worn down doing undercover work. So instead of quitting officially the way you're supposed to, he walked away."
"Some people might call that desertion."
"Would they? Big deal!"
"Anyway, I got a little more than that," Janek said.
"Pension fraud? I never took a cent. That's between Janet and the Department. Nothing to do with me."
"There's homicide."
"Whose are we talking about?"
"I count four: Edith Mendoza, the guy in your car, Gus Metaxas and Phyllis Komfeld."
Clury laughed. "Edith? No one's ever going to figure that one out.
Guy in my car? Who's he? Way I heard it, they found some body parts which got cremated nine years ago. Metaxas? He killed himself. No one can prove otherwise. Komfeld? You gotta be kidding. She was killed by a robber. You'll never tie her to me."
You don't know I've got Dakin in my pocket. "You blew up my car," Janek said.
"I didn't. I was. fishing off the Keys that night. I can prove it, too."
Yeah, you probably can.
"So, you got it all figured, don't you, Clury? Why'd you bother to call?"
"I want to work things out. Sure, I can disappear. But I don't want to see Janet hurt. My new wife either."
What a nice man!
"We'll have to meet and discuss it."
"No problem. Just you and me. No one else. I'll pick the time and place."
Go for it!
"Sorry, can't do that. You'll have to surrender at my office. Think it over. If you're interested, call me back. I'll be at home. No more phone booths. Think about this, too. The Department wants Mendoza closed. if you help me close it, maybe something can be worked out. But you'll have to surrender first." He waited a beat, then hung up.
He's watching, he reminded himself as he walked back to his building.
Move with confidence so he sees you know you've got him by the balls.
After two days of silence he wondered if he'd made a mistake. He thought: Maybe I went too far. Surrender is more than he can tolerate.
But he still didn't see how Clury could disappear again, since, this time, he'd be a wanted man. Also, he was nine years older. He had a nice life as Dan Dell in Crystal River. Could he walk away so easily from everything-wife, business, bank accounts? What were his choices?
At first Janek thought he had him boxed. Now, after two days, he wasn't sure.
Maybe, he thought, Stoney's right. Maybe Clury will throw a bomb. But Janek didn't see the point of that. He viewed Clury as an ice-cold killer, not a nut case. Everything he'd done, the way he'd set up Metaxas and murdered Komfeld, was amoral, logical and totally self-serving. Sol why now try to kill the COPS who were after him? He had to know that if he did that he'd only provoke the formation of a posse.
On the other hand, Janek reasoned, how could Clury walk away from his sweet life in Florida and his new, Young, pretty wife? His only reasonable choice was to surrender, with the hope that he could make some kind of deal.
Clearly he wouldn't plead to a homicide count or anything that would earn him heavy time, but he might be willing to go in for a couple of years just to clean the slate. Yes, Clury's best bet was to help close the Mendoza case, which he might believe he could do without implicating himself. His biggest problem would be to explain who was in his Cadillac when it blew. If he was smart, and Janek believed he was, he would come up with a plausible explanation and some proof to back it up.
What he would not know, of course, was that Phyllis Komfeld had identified him years before to Dakin. Nor would he know that under the Dead Man Statutes, such @'hearsay" could be presented in court, and that Dakin, desperate to save his ass, would eagerly testify.
But there was another side to the thing. Suppose Mendoza had paid Clury to kill his wife? How much money could Clury have gotten? Fifty thousand? A hundred? Not nearly enough to run away on, not nearly enough to take himself to a new life. So, maybe what Clury had said was partly true: Perhaps he was, as he claimed, a burned-out cop who decided one day to walk.
Still, Janek knew, he hadn't walked without money. So, where had he gotten it, if not from Mendoza and Janet's widow's pension? Dakin had said that Cury was dirty, that he hadn't been dealing but had been a double agent. What if Clury had stolen from the group he'd penetrated?
Not the kind of chicken feed Timmy had taken off Keniston, but real money, the kind big-time drug dealers keep lying around-a million, maybe even two? Then his dropout walkout made some sense. And whatever he got to kill Mendoza would have been a little extra cream on top of all that milk.
Yeah, Janek decided, it must have been something like that. What he couldn't decide, however, was which of the two men was most evil: Howard Clury with his bombs and hands-on homicides, or Jake Mendoza with his money and hired killers.
When Clury finally did call early on Thursday, a few minutes after midnight, Janek was about to fall asleep. He groped for the phone beside his bed.
"Yeah?"
"It, s me." Clury's voice sounded less harsh than before. "I'm ready to meet."
Janek thought he heard a note of resignation, as if Clury had been chewing on his options and concluded that none of them was good.
"Glad to hear it," Janek said. "How's tomorrow morning? My office is in the old Property building in the Village."
"No, you don't get it. I'm calling from Newark."
Janek rolled over, then sat up, awake. Suddenly his heart began to pound.
"What're you doing there?"