Widow's Walk Part 39

Kiley didn't say anything. He went to the bed and sat beside his daughter. Conroy fumbled with his cuff links. He turned his gaze from Kiley and focused it on me.

"And what the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" he said.

He was getting tougher by the minute. By the time his cuff links were in he'd be threatening me. I leaned against the door.

"Here's what I've got," I said. "I know you were looking into Nathan Smith's s.e.xual preferences."

"What the f.u.c.k are you talking about?" Conroy said.

"And I know you had Jack DeRosa hire a couple of mulligans to beat up a real estate appraiser named Bisbee to make sure he didn't tell anybody that you were asking him to inflate appraisals. And I know you got Jack DeRosa from Ann Kiley, and I know you got Ann to go down and straighten things out when the mulligans got arrested. And I know that you were in business with Soldiers Field Development, and I'm pretty sure I can prove that you were involved in some sort of land flip with them. You worked with Amy Peters. She's dead. You worked with Jack DeRosa. He's dead. You were snooping on Nathan Smith. He's dead. Sooner or later I'll tie you to Brinkman Tyler."

I stopped. Conroy was silent. I didn't blame him. There was a lot coming down. He didn't say, "Who's Brinkman Tyler," and he probably should have. After a moment, he stood.

"I'm leaving," he said firmly.

I shook my head. "No," I said. "You're not."

"Are you saying you'll prevent me?"

"Yes."

He stared at me, trying for outrage. He fell a little short. He was thinking about whether he could force me to let him go, and deciding that he couldn't. He was correct.

"You can't-"

"Sure I can," I said. "What we're trying to decide here is how much we can keep her out of it."

For the first time since he'd come out of the bathroom, Conroy looked at Ann.

"There's no it to keep anybody out of," Conroy said. "You haven't got anything worth listening to."

"What do you think?" I said to Ann.

Still staring emptily at nothing, she shook her head.

"You haven't any right," she said without looking up. "Neither of you has any right."

"I can't help you if I don't know what I'm doing," I said. "Tell me what you know."

"I know I love Marvin," she said.

Seated beside her Kiley closed his eyes for a moment and stretched his neck a little.

"Anyone would," I said. "But are you ready to go to jail with him?"

"If I have to."

"How far out of this can we keep her," Kiley said to me.

"Depends how far in she is," I said. "Much of what I said about Conroy could be said about your daughter."

It was a gamble. But Kiley was a smart guy, and very tough, and if he picked up on it maybe we'd have something.

"You're saying if you can't get him you'll get her?" Kiley said.

He got it. I wanted to go over and sit in his lap.

"Would work either way," I said.

"You said we could work something out."

"We can, with one of them, but not both, and to tell you the truth, Bobby, I don't especially care which one it is. h.e.l.l, it works for me if they both go."

Kiley put an arm around his daughter's shoulders. She seemed to contract in a bit on herself when he did it. Her head was still down.

"Honey," Bobby Kiley said. "Tell us what you know."

She shook her head. Kiley looked at Conroy.

"How about you?"

"I have nothing to say."

"For G.o.d's sake, man. I've been in criminal law all my life. They've got enough. This guy will get you. I know this guy. You don't. He'll bring you down, and if you don't help her, my daughter will go with you."

Conroy was silent. He looked at me leaning against the door.

"You tell me what I need," I said, "and I can keep her out of it."

"You and I both love her," Kiley said. "We can't let this happen to her."

Conroy walked to the window and stared through it at the shabby cityscape below him. For the first time since we'd come into the room, Ann Kiley raised her head. Her father's arm still around her, she looked at Conroy. He kept looking out the window. Then, as if he could feel her look, he turned back toward us. None of us said anything. He looked at Ann Kiley. After a long moment Conroy nodded his head.

"Okay," he said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT.

"I didn't kill anybody," Conroy said.

"You just had it done," I said.

"No. That was Shawcross."

"He had it done?"

"Yeah."

The gloss of Conroy's CEO manner was sloughing off rapidly.

"You were just the middleman," I said.

Conroy shrugged. "I worked for Felton Shawcross," he said.

He was sitting on the edge of the hard chair, his forearms on his thighs, his hands clasped between his knees. Ann Kiley, still in the hotel bathrobe, sat on the bed. Bobby Kiley sat beside her.

"We were working a loan-to-value scam on Pequod," Conroy said. "You need me to explain that?"

I looked at Bobby Kiley.

"I know what a loan-to-value scam is," Kiley said.

"Later," I said.

"Good," Conroy said. "Smith didn't like it, but we knew he was gay, and we knew he was hiding it. So we squeezed him."

"Which is how you got to be president of Pequod," I said.

"Yeah. Smith was chairman, but that was just for show. He did what we told him."

"And?" I said.

"And we were making a f.u.c.king fortune," Conroy said.

"But?"

"But Smith wouldn't stay squeezed. He finally said if we didn't move on and let go of his bank he'd go to the cops."

"So?"

"So Shawcross had him killed, and rigged it to look like a suicide. But somebody f.u.c.ked it up."

"Mrs. Smith," I said. "She thought it was suicide and didn't want to forfeit her insurance and decided to make it look like a murder."

"Which it was," Bobby Kiley said.

Conroy shook his head, thinking about it.

"Ain't that great," he said. "And we didn't know why the suicide setup went wrong, but it did and we had to go to plan B."

"Which was to frame Mary Smith for the murder."

"Yeah."

Conroy looked at Ann Kiley again. She looked back at him. Something went on between them for a moment. I waited for it to stop.

Then I said, "What about Amy Peters?"

"That was bad," he said. "She told me she'd talked to you, asked if there was anything going on she should know about. Said she could serve the bank better if she knew what was up so she wouldn't be blsided."

"Good employee," I said.

"Yeah. She was very career-driven," Conroy said. "I mentioned it to Felton and that was it for her."

"Just for asking?" Ann said.

Conroy looked at her again for a moment.

"Felton is a really smart guy," Conroy said. "But he's... he's like Stalin or somebody. Any suspicion, you're dead."

"Must have been fun to work for," I said. "What happened to Brink Tyler."

"I don't know. I mean, I know Felton had him zipped, but I never knew what for. Maybe Smith talked to him about his situation-you know, had a problem related to money, so he talked with his broker? Guys like Smith sometimes don't have anyone else to talk to."

"How about guys like you?" I said.

"I had Ann," he said. "Maybe Tyler decided to cut himself in, whatever. He knew something, so Felton had him killed."

"Who's doing all this killing?" Bobby Kiley said.

"We recruited local guys."

"How?" I said.

"Through DeRosa. They never knew who they were working for."

"Would Shawcross kill someone himself if he had to?" I said.

"Sure."

"DeRosa was a valuable man," I said. "Why waste him on the Mary Smith frame?"

"He was in jail anyway," Conroy said. "Small-time street thing, the a.s.shole. We got it fixed. But meanwhile, it gave him a reason to make a deal with the DA for ratting out Mary Smith."

"Credibility," I said. "Who were the stumbleb.u.ms that followed me around and tried to brace me in the parking garage?"

"They were from Felton. He had some people on, ah, staff."

"But he didn't use them for heavy lifting?"

"No," Conroy said. "Not usually. He wanted to keep that separate. Anybody who did any killing only knew DeRosa."

"That true of the guys that tried me in Fort Point?"