Chapter 17: The Dying Man in Jersey

Teo's POV

The hospice sat at the end of a gravel road in New Jersey, behind a dark line of pines.

I drove there myself, with no men and no gun.

It was three in the morning.

A night nurse met me at the desk and looked at my coat, and at the dried blood on my cuff, and at my face.

"Family?" she said.

"No."

"He doesn't get visitors."

"He'll see me," I said. "Tell him the man from the corner."

She went down the hall and came back without saying a word.

His room had one lamp and a window onto the pines.

The man in the bed had been Benny's driver for twenty years.

I had last seen him at the curb on Mulberry Street, with the engine running.

Now he weighed ninety pounds and had a tube in his nose.

"Teo," he said. His voice was a thread. "They said you'd come."

"Who said?"

"Nobody. I just knew."

I pulled the chair to the bed and sat.

"You know why I'm here."

"You want to know who fired." He closed his eyes. "You were on the corner. You know who fired."

"I want you to say it."

"Say it to who?"

"To the Commission. To the chair. On a recording, with your name, tonight."

He opened his eyes.

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you're dying," I said. "And because I'll pay for it."

A long breath rattled in his chest.

"What've you got, kid? I don't want money."

"What do you want?"

He turned his head on the pillow.

"I've got two granddaughters in Queens. Benny stopped sending their mother money two years ago. I begged him."

"They'll be paid. Tuition, rent, everything."

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