The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [146]
The headlines flashed across Reggie’s mind. The headlines if Reggie Vallentine killed the father of his client’s victim. No matter how justified, no matter that it would be a clear case of self-defense, it would only cement his bond with Solomon Gold. They would be a killing team. Butch and Sundance. Leopold and Loeb. The wealthy and unsympathetic killers of undeserving father-daughter victims.
Vallentine and Gold. History would put Reggie’s name first. It sounded better.
Reggie Vallentine, who had become famous by taking on the impossible and winning, by thinking quickly on his feet, by making prudent decisions in a split second’s time, figured out what he was supposed to do next.
With the gun in his left hand, he turned forty-five degrees and from just four feet away fired a fatal shot into the center of Solomon Gold’s face that shook inside Reggie’s ears like a cymbal crash.
The sound had caused Mr. Liu to recoil and now his gun was pointed away as Reggie turned the revolver again toward him. Liu was confused and frightened. Although he might have arrived here with the intent to murder a man, he had clearly not prepared himself for seeing a man murdered.
Reggie nodded at Gold’s body, which had fallen on its back, away from Reggie, toward the desk. “Take Solomon’s wallet,” Reggie said. “And his watch. Hurry.”
Michael Liu nodded slowly. It wasn’t clear if he understood what Reggie had planned, only that he was compelled to submit. He felt in Gold’s pants and removed his billfold, but he had difficulty with the latch on the watch. Searching pockets, he found Erica’s necklace and he paused for a moment, sobbing, before stuffing it into his pocket. He turned to look into Gold’s vacant face, as if some final words Reggie couldn’t hear were escaping the composer’s mouth.
A siren outside, still at a distance, around corners. Reggie spun Solomon Gold’s revolver and, gripping the still-hot barrel through his coat sleeve, offered its handle to Michael Liu. “Get rid of it.”
Michael Liu took the gun and traced a line with his eyes from it to Reggie’s face and back again, perhaps imagining what it would be like to finish the job he had come to do. With both guns in his possession, and his enemy dead, he could delete Solomon Gold’s representative, the public face of his enemy, with little resistance.
He said instead in a nervous rasp, “We will share a secret, Mr. Vallentine.”
Reggie said, “Call it a retainer.”
Michael Liu nodded and left at a run, hunchbacked over the watch and wallet and guns cradled inside his arms. Reggie, in great pain and bleeding but still alive, began contemplating the murder he had committed. He hadn’t killed Solomon in self-defense, at least not the way the courts would see it, but he had killed in self-preservation.
He wondered now about the story he would tell. Perhaps there was a way to show the world the monster Solomon had been—if they could only hear the cruel words he had just spoken to Erica Liu’s father. But he thought of Gold’s innocent daughter. She had suffered so much and would suffer still. Perhaps standing by Gold’s memory, maintaining his client’s innocence, perpetuating the slightest bit of doubt, the smallest, last pebble of hope that her father might not have been a savage killer was a gift Reggie could give to young Canada Constanze Gold.
With one hand, Reggie swept up the scattered pages of the requiem and stuffed and locked them inside his briefcase. It will look like a robbery. They will think Solomon was killed for his manuscript. He listened for Michael Liu’s steps out the door and down the stairs of Gold’s home—now the widow Elizabeth’s home (transferred without a protracted divorce, one more favor the overburdened legal system owed Reggie Vallentine). Just ahead of the sirens he heard the gate clang as Liu passed through it, out onto the empty sidewalk and into the shadows of Lincoln Park.
Where Solomon Gold had said the wolves would be.
55
A FEW HOURS in a police