Payback Read online

  Payback is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Hardback ISBN 9780399177590

  Ebook ISBN 9780399177606

  Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Carlos Beltrán

  Cover photograph: Leo Patrizi/Getty Images

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  By Lorenzo Carcaterra

  About the Author

  “Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”

  —ANDRÉ MALRAUX

  1.

  POLICE INTERROGATION ROOM

  NOVEMBER 2000

  “JUST TELL THE TRUTH. THAT’S all you need to do. Once that’s done, then I’ll take care of the rest.” Detective First Grade Eddie Kenwood walked around the small, windowless room, hands deep inside the pockets of a pair of brown J. Crew slacks, his eyes on the frightened young man slumped against the table, its wooden edges frayed and worn.

  “You’re only wasting time, Randy,” Kenwood said. “Mine and yours. Just tell me what I need to hear and we can both be on our way.”

  Randy Jenkins rubbed his eyes and gazed up at Detective Kenwood. “I wasn’t there. I swear on my mama’s grave. I wasn’t there.”

  “Save that my-mama’s-grave line of shit for somebody else,” Kenwood said. “Gangbanger like you should know better than to play that game with me. I don’t buy in to bullshit. Especially not from the likes of you. And especially when I got prints, your prints, on a knife I got tucked safe and sound in the evidence room. Now, are you going to fuckin’ level with me or not?”

  Eddie Kenwood was a highly decorated homicide detective with a long string of arrests attached to his impressive record. He closed his cases at a rapid pace and always delivered a signed-and-sealed confession. Most of the prosecutors working in the homicide division clamored to have one of Kenwood’s folders land on their desks, knowing it meant a slam-dunk conviction and a twenty-year sentence, along with a nod of approval from their boss.

  Kenwood ridiculed detectives with lower conviction rates, cashing in on the traditional round of free drinks from the other members of the squad whenever he closed another file. He looked and dressed the part of the successful homicide detective—wearing neatly tailored suits or slick-catalog casual slacks and blazers. He was thirty-eight years old and had been on the force for sixteen years. He was tall and slender, ran five miles a day, usually on the streets of his Baldwin, Long Island, neighborhood. He kept his hair trimmed short and had his nails done once a week at a local salon two blocks from his precinct.

  He was twice divorced, and both ex-wives had moved out of state once the marriage was over. He had no children and lived alone in a well-furnished two-story attached house on a quiet cul-de-sac. He didn’t associate with his neighbors and was a rabid hockey fan, never missing a New York Rangers game, either watching them play from the blue seats at the Garden or, when they were on the road, in his favorite bar. He planned to retire in four years, cash in his pension and full health benefits, and maybe move somewhere where he could count on sunshine every day. He was considered the very model of a professional working at the top of his game.

  Randy Jenkins didn’t stand a chance locked in a room with Eddie Kenwood.

  Jenkins was twenty-six and had a jacket with three prior convictions—two for assault and one for robbery. He had been out less than two months after completing a three-year spin at an upstate prison. He’d put doing time to good use—earning his GED and taking art classes. His mother had died three days after his sixth birthday and he had met his father twice, the last time at his funeral. He was raised by a grandmother who worked two full-time jobs until chronic back pain forced her to spend most days sitting in a La-Z-Boy in a cramped Harlem apartment.

  Randy was short and tilted toward chubby. He had a sweet tooth and loved nothing better than a large cup of strawberry ice cream topped with Reese’s Pieces. His street friends would tease him about his weight.

  “You hear about Randy?” one of them would ask.

  “No, what?”

  “He’s got himself TB.”

  “Tuberculosis?”

  “No, man. Three bellies.”

  The nickname “TB” stuck, even as Randy put in a solid effort to slim down.

  He ran with a tough crowd and hustled for money any way and anywhere he could. He was a mugger, a petty thief, a small-time drug dealer, and a car booster.

  What he was not was a murderer.

  He knew the victim. But he would never bring harm to her. He stared at her photo, resting faceup in the center of the small table. A woman whose mutilated body had been found less than a block from where Randy lived. A woman who had been seen on more than one occasion in Randy’s company.

  “Say her name for me,” Kenwood said.

  “I told you five times already, I know her
name,” Randy said. “Rachel. Rachel Nieves. I knew her, no lie. But I didn’t kill her. And that’s no lie, either.”

  “But you did kill her, Randy,” Kenwood said. He was hovering over the younger man, the sleeves of his crisp white shirt folded neatly up his forearms, his face flushed slightly red. “I know it and you know it. You took her into a shooting gallery, that’s a fact. There’s no denying that. I got two sets of eyeballs that will back me up. The two of you scored some smack, got a nice buzz going, and that’s when you made your move.”

  “I didn’t hurt her,” Randy said, his voice breaking, sweat streaking the back of his brown T-shirt. “I would never hurt Rachel. She was my friend.”

  “You carry a blade, don’t you, Randy?” Kenwood asked. “Don’t say no to me. Understand? Never say no to me. I got the knife, remember? And it’s got your prints on it. And your friend Rachel, she got sliced and diced by somebody who knows how to use a blade. To my eyes, that can only be you. Tell me I’m right about that, Randy. You want to get out of this room, don’t you? That’s easy. All you need to do is tell me the truth. Tell me it was you that killed Rachel Nieves.”

  Randy shook his head, tears now mingled with sweat, streaming down the sides of his face. The heat in the room was unbearable, and it was hard for Randy to take a deep breath. Kenwood circled the room, and on every second turn he would slap his right hand on the wooden table, kicking up a dust cloud. He would occasionally bend down and glare at Randy, hover over him, their eyes locked. One set determined to get a confession. The other set overcome with fear.

  “Time stops in this room, Randy,” Kenwood said, taking a break from his pacing, resting his back against a gray wall. “There are no days, no hours, no minutes, no seconds. There’s just you and there’s me. And there’s a murder that needs to be solved. A murder we both know is on you. That’s the only way out of this room, Randy. You need to tell me what I already know. What we both know. You need to tell me you killed Rachel Nieves. Then it will be over.”

  Randy lifted his head and looked across the room at Kenwood. “I didn’t hurt her,” he said. His voice was barely above a whisper, and both his cheeks twitched in rapid spurts.

  “You got it wrong, kid,” Kenwood said. He stepped away from the wall and moved menacingly toward Randy. “What you meant to say is you didn’t mean to hurt her. But you did hurt her. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was because she told you she wasn’t interested in you anymore. Maybe it was both. You snapped. And you hurt her, Randy. You more than hurt her. You killed her. Look at that picture on the table. Take a good long look at it. That’s your work. That’s what you did to a young woman you call your friend.”

  Randy turned away from Kenwood and stared down at the photo of a battered and beaten Rachel Nieves. “She was my friend,” was all he managed to say.

  “That’s right,” Kenwood said, nodding in agreement. “She was. And now she’s dead. And she’s dead because of you. Because of her friend.”

  “Can I get some water?” Randy asked. His words more a plea than a demand.

  “As much as you want and as cold as you can take it,” Kenwood said. “Soon as we wrap up here. Soon as you tell me what it is I need to hear. I’ll even throw in a Big Mac and fries. It’s all there waiting for you. Believe me, Randy, I want out of this room much as you do. But neither one of us is going anywhere until you open up and start telling me the truth about what you did to Rachel.”

  Kenwood left the room for a few minutes, as Randy Jenkins sat alone, frightened, shaking his head in disbelief, his mind now reduced to a jumble of rambling thoughts. He knew he wasn’t a murderer. He had his head down, drops of sweat running from his head to his face and onto the scarred table. He closed his eyes and tried in vain to figure a way out of the situation he found himself in.

  Kenwood came back in and slowly closed the door behind him. He was holding a plastic cup of water and walked over to Jenkins and placed it in the center of the table. He stood and waited as Randy put out a trembling hand and reached for the cup of water. Then, with one swift and violent motion, Kenwood slammed a closed fist on the table, shaking it so hard one of the legs nearly collapsed. The cup of water went sprawling to the floor and Randy Jenkins sat cowering in fear. Kenwood grabbed Randy’s face and held it firm in his right hand. “Listen to me,” he said in a voice filled with hatred and determination. “There is only one fucking way you’re getting out of this room. And that’s once you confess to killing Rachel Nieves.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “Confess,” Kenwood snarled. “Or die right here, right now, right in this fucking room.”

  Randy Jenkins lifted his head and stared at Detective Eddie Kenwood. Their eyes locked, and the look in Kenwood’s—red, raw, determined—told Randy what a horrible fate awaited him. It was at that moment Randy Jenkins knew he would never be allowed to leave that room until he admitted to a brutal murder he did not commit.

  It could take many more hours, go deep into the night and through the early morning. He would be berated, insulted, beaten, intimidated to the point where he himself would start to believe the confession he would scrawl his name across.

  Randy Jenkins knew his time in this suffocating room would be replaced by decades in an even smaller room, with iron bars and a bed cemented into a stone wall. His days would be filled with menial chores and he would never again know a night of restful sleep. He would go in a troubled young man and come out, if he came out at all, as a hardened and ruined old one.

  His days as a free man were at an end.

  Detective Eddie Kenwood would see to that.

  And in that same moment, glancing down at a frightened young man out of options and at a loss for hope or rescue, Eddie Kenwood knew he would walk out of that room with one more signed confession to add to his list.

  A confession that would lead to yet another 25-to-life conviction.

  Yet one more gold star next to his gold shield.

  2.

  GREENWICH VILLAGE

  AUGUST 2017

  I HAD MY LEGS STRETCHED OUT, resting my back against a chain-link fence as I watched my nephew, Chris, shoot baskets from different ends of the cement court. He had grown a bit in the few months he’d been living with me, both in height and in bulk. Chris had been working out in my friend Bruno’s gym, around the corner from my brownstone, and the time seemed to have been put to good use.

  His world had been turned upside down over the winter. His parents, my brother and his wife, were killed in a car accident on a snowy night in Westchester County, and I gave the fifteen-year-old a choice—come live with me or go through the system for the next three years. I like to think he made the smart move. Not that living with me is a cakewalk, not by any means. I like my routine, am set in my ways, and I don’t like change of any kind.

  I should mention I’m also an ex-cop, got shot off the job closing in on two years now, along with my best friend and partner, Frank “Pearl” Monroe. The guys on the job call what happened to me and Pearl “cop lotto.” Our wounds come with a three-quarter tax-free pension for life along with great health insurance that comes minus a tab. But trust me, as nice as it sounds, it’s not worth the damage done to get it. Especially not when it comes to Pearl, sentenced as he is to life in a wheelchair.

  It took a while, but I put together a good life for myself, one that works for me. Sure, I miss the job, hunting down a top-tier dealer or a homicidal thug, breaking down a case, putting all the pieces together until they fit. An old cop once told me that putting on that uniform and heading out on a tour was like “being given a front-row ticket to the greatest and most exciting show on earth. There’s nothing in the world like it. You piss and moan while you’re in the middle of it and you miss it like you would a great lover when it’s taken away.” Truer words.

  Chris walked toward me, basketball cradled under his right arm. He was a handsom
e kid, long brown hair, eyes alert and always taking everything in, an easy manner to him, at least most of the time. Teenage boys have mood swings that can make your head spin if you make any effort to keep track of them. Luckily, I don’t.

  He’s a crime buff, my nephew. Watches all the shows—both the dramas and the ones on the Discovery Channel—reads the books, sees the movies, studies newspaper and magazine articles like they’re the SATs. He even belongs to an online chat group that works toward solving old cases. He’s Sherlock Holmes minus the silly hat, the pipe, and the drug habit.

  He also doesn’t believe his parents’ death was an accident. He’s convinced they were murdered, set up by the accounting firm where my brother worked. Chris is a whiz with a computer, can find sites and dig up information with speed and accuracy. He did such an impressive job on his theory, piling up facts and details missing from the police, medical, and insurance reports, that it convinced me, against my sounder judgment, to look into the firm and see if they were indeed dirty.

  I still catch cases every now and then, usually handed my way by Chief of Detectives Ray Connors. The two of us go back to our early days in uniform, and he’s a trusted and valued friend. He doles out a case that’s deemed too cold or throws a call my way when the department is stretched too thin, and I work it with Pearl and a team I’ve assembled in the years since I’ve been off the job. You’ll get to know them all soon enough.