Creem paused, maybe even just to smile to himself. He was enjoying this, no doubt.
“Don’t bother with this phone, by the way,” he said. “I bought it an hour ago and I’m throwing it away after this call.”
He was probably using a convenience store burner, or something like it. From a cop’s perspective, those are the worst. They can be impossible to track down.
I figured the best way to keep Creem talking would be to feed that oversize ego of his. It was the only language he seemed to speak.
“You know, there’s a massive manhunt going on right now,” I said. “You’ve given us quite the slip.”
“Any luck so far?” he asked.
“If there were—”
“Of course. We wouldn’t be having thi
s conversation,” Creem said.
I also knew better than to condescend to him. One thing about Creem—he wasn’t stupid. If I lost him now, something told me that would be it.
“I’d love to know how you pulled this off,” I said. “It’s been a fascinating case. You, Bergman, all of it. I assume you were in it together from the start.”
This time Creem sighed, almost nostalgically. “All the way back to college, in fact. We got a bit of a taste for it then, just like old Jack Sprat and his wife.”
“Excuse me?”
“He liked the boys, I liked the girls. And between the two of us, we licked the platter clean.”
His calm, collected pride in the whole thing gave me the creeps. Wherever he was headed, I didn’t think for a second he’d be able to stop himself from killing again.
“So what now?” I said. “You disappear, never to be heard from?”
“That’s the idea,” he said.
“Are you leaving the country?” I asked, but Creem demurred.
“I called because I wanted to know about Josh,” he told me. “If you don’t have anything to say about that, I’m hanging up.”
When I looked at Valente, he just shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair. It wasn’t going well.
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
“Is he dead or not?”
“Yes,” I told him. It would all be in the news soon enough anyway.
“Where did he do it?” Creem asked.
“In his loft, on M Street,” I said, stalling.
“No. I mean, it sounded to me like he shot himself. Was it in the mouth?”
“Under the chin,” I said.
“Lord. Must have been a terrible mess.”
“It was,” I said. “Is that hard for you? He was your friend, after all.”
Creem paused again. I listened hard for any kind of telltale background noise, but there was nothing.