by Tom Barber
‘He was embarrassed about his past so had lost touch with a lot of old friends. Said he thought back then that Doc wouldn’t want anything to do with him, being in the army. But Doc was struggling too.’
‘Doc?’
‘What everyone called Johnny Reyes. Nicky’s father. He was an army medic, or had been. Tommy ran into him in a bar one night after work when he was with his guys getting some drinks. Bartender told Tommy that Doc basically lived in there. When he found out Doc wasn’t doing so good, Mr Tommy asked him if he wanted to join his team. He didn’t have any experience, but he picked things up fast. Tommy remembered that from when they were kids.
‘Doc said no, but Tommy worked on him and he ended up helping them out on a build. Mr Tommy got him to open up gradually. Found out Doc had a son and they were living in Kinsmith. He hadn’t washed out of the army either; he’d left to look after his son. His sister had been doing that for him, but she was killed in an accident while he was overseas.’
‘Kinsmith,’ Richie said. ‘It’s like our second home in Robbery-Homicide.’
‘Right. He couldn’t pay Doc more than his other guys. Wouldn’t be fair and they’d find out at some point anyway. So instead he also offered to rent Doc and Nicky a place to live in a better part of the city. Got them out of the bad neighborhood.’
‘That was generous.’
‘Mr Tommy felt guilty, I think. He’d gone to prison and had managed to turn his life around, but Doc had served his country and his life had fallen apart. Tommy hired other guys who’d been to prison on his teams too, knowing how hard it was for them to find a job; most of them were good workers and grateful for the opportunity. He used to say a person could try to survive on their own, but to make something of yourself, you need to help each other.’
‘Was Thomas O’Mara with Blair at this point?’ Richie asked, remembering the woman who’d shown up at the intersection on East Superior the previous night.
‘He was. They met a couple years after Kat’s mother died.’
‘And Nicky’s mom? You said she was killed when Doc was serving overseas?’
‘No, she died when Nicky was born. His aunt took over the job of looking after him but like I told you, she was killed when the boy was twelve. Gang shooting in Kinsmith. Bullet went through the wall of their house, hit her in the neck when she was in there watching TV with the boy. She didn’t die immediately; he watched her go in front of him as he tried to help.’
That detail hadn’t been on Nicky Reyes’ file. Richie paused and didn’t answer.
‘After she died, Doc left the army to look after Nicky but he couldn’t find work. When Tommy met him that day in the bar, he’d just been turned away from another hospital.’
‘And Kat’s mom?’ Richie asked.
‘Was on a phone call, didn’t see a bus coming fast on the inside lane when she stepped into the street. Happened when Kat was ten years old. Meant both Tommy and Doc had lost the mother of their kids way too early. Their friendship had layers to it. They had a lot in common.’
Richie remembered the bloodstains by the mail bin from the truck robbery. The wounded girl, out there on the run, the daughter of a self-made multi-millionaire heading back down the road of crime her father had left behind. ‘Katherine. Tell me more about her.’
‘Sensitive. Anxious. When I was hired to help out in their home, she was thirteen years old and underweight. Mr Tommy told me she went through periods of not eating properly after her mom died and he didn’t know what to do about it. Neither did Blair once she started living in the house not long after I got the job. Once they took me on, I spent a lot of time with her, started seeing to it that she ate some good food. Got her back up to a normal weight. But it was a struggle.’
‘Did you live at the house?’
‘No. Once she moved in, Blair didn’t want anyone living there who wasn’t family. Just her, Kat, Mr Tommy and Blair’s daughter Alaina. I heard her telling him once it was because she was worried he was a target.’
‘From who?’
‘People from his old life. I told you, he was in prison before he became successful. Pretty much all the wealthy families in the suburb they lived in had hired help, but none of them were treated the way me and Doc were by Mr Tommy. He was a good man.’
‘Was Doc a decent father to Nicky?’ Marquez asked.
She hesitated. ‘I think he tried to be.’
Nicky had gone to the far east side of the NY State fairground and retrieved the bag of money and boxed-up jewelry; he’d checked out the area an hour before and had found what he’d been looking for, a sufficient space under the fence in a quiet area where some long trucks were parked some distance from the main activity.
Just before he’d walked round through the front, he’d forced the bag under the fence. Relieved to see it was still there, he removed two items he wanted, tucked them into his pocket, then headed back towards the fair.
But he had one more stop to make first.
Brooks was the first to notice their fellow prison escapee, coming towards them from where there weren’t as many people, no popular stalls nearby and some distance from the main stage where music acts were performing.
Nicky stopped ten feet or so in front of the two men, a few people walking past too focused on their night out to recognize the trio. Three fugitives of the Gatlin Four; reunited.
‘Surprised you made it in here without our help,’ Brooks sneered, initiating the conversation.
‘I don’t use you two to break into places. Just to break out.’
‘You’ve been busy, asshole.’
‘Same as you. You planning to try and kill me too?’
‘Not if you do what we want.’
‘I’m the one holding the bag with real value.’
‘Your girl wanted this one for a reason, Reyes,’ Brooks said. ‘Something about this box we don’t know about?’
‘It’s some stuff her father left her.’
‘Let’s just do this shi-,’ Billy said impatiently, but then stopped.
The red dot of a laser had just hit his older brother’s chest.
Brooks glanced down to see what his sibling was looking at, then his eyes started darting around the fairground, trying to locate the source.
‘You’re not gonna see her,’ Nicky told them. ‘Kat’s on the mend. And she’s got a rifle trained right on you, so don’t think about pulling on me. You wanted to do this, so let’s do it.’
‘Nicky would come to where the team Doc was working on for Thomas were building or rebuilding homes, and he’d hang out after school,’ Marija told Richie in Cleveland. ‘Asked questions, sometimes helped them carry stuff. Mr Tommy took a shine to the boy, invited him to come to the house with Doc a couple times. I got to know him then. So did Kat. He was about thirteen, fourteen years old, same as her and Alaina.’
‘You liked him.’
‘I did. He was tough, no pushover. Had to be; he was the son of an alcoholic and that’s not easy. He was getting into it with some of the other kids at school who knew his father had a drinking problem so learned to stand his ground. We thought he might be trouble, but he wasn’t. He was a good kid and street-smart. He just…’
‘Got a raw deal.’
She nodded. ‘Doc would go through periods when he wasn’t drinking, and he’d take the boy out of the city for the weekend. They’d ride his motorbike into the woods and go camping. He taught Nicky things he’d learned from the army.’
‘Like treating wounds?’
‘Yeah, and shooting guns, riding bikes, how to hunt and lay traps. As I said, Mr Tommy liked the boy a lot too and the two families went to some Indians games. I think Kat fell for him.’
‘What about Alaina? Blair’s daughter?’
‘More interested in herself than boys, I think. Don’t think she and Nicky ever really spoke that much. Got a lot of her mother in her.’
‘You don’t care for Alaina?’
‘Not really. She’s greedy.�
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‘What were Nicky’s plans for his future before he got arrested? Do you know?’
‘He wanted to join the army after he graduated high school. Become a medic like his father.’
‘Did Doc ever stop drinking?’ Richie then asked.
‘He tried. He ended up dying in a vehicle crash, like Kat’s mom, but unlike her, he was drunk and behind the wheel. Nicky wasn’t with him and that’s about the only piece of luck that boy had his entire childhood.’
‘How’d he deal with it?’
‘Losing both his parents before he finished high school? He was devastated. But he was used to things being shitty. Just had to accept it and try to move on. Mr Tommy took guardianship of him which helped. He was going to enlist in the army at sixteen instead of waiting two more years, but Tommy convinced him to still get his diploma first and sign up once he graduated.’
‘What about Kat?’
‘She was doing OK. Worried about Nicky. But then Mr Tommy died less than a year later from pneumonia and things started going wrong for her too. I was let go after he died, but me and Kat spoke on the phone a few times before Blair stopped her calling. Wouldn’t let me visit her either; said they needed to move on. It was her house now so wasn’t much I could do.
‘Then more things started going bad. Miss Kat told me in that last call that she wasn’t feeling well again.’ Marija seemed as if she was about to cry, but held it together. ‘Kat’s father gave Nicky and his dad an opportunity. His whole life, all anyone’s ever done is turn their back on that boy. No-one ever gave him a shot. But Tommy did.’
‘So Nicky’s trying to save Thomas’ daughter in return?’
She nodded. ‘He’d do anything for the O’Maras. Including serving twelve years in prison. That was for Katherine too. His kind of luck.’
‘You said she fell for him. Did he feel the same way?’
‘I think so, but I don’t think anything ever happened. He was too busy trying to survive back then. And then he was locked up for killing another young man.’
Some cheering and loud music came from the main stage across the New York State Fairground, but the three wanted men ignored it.
‘You first,’ Brooks said to Nicky, looking at his bag.
‘Mine’s worth a lot more. Let me see.’ Billy opened the zipper and showed Nicky the padlocked titanium box inside. He closed it back up and went to toss it on the ground in front of Nicky, but his brother caught his arm and looked at their fellow prison fugitive suspiciously.
‘Why does she want this back so bad?’ Brooks asked. ‘Why not just keep the money and run?’
‘What’s in there has sentimental value to her. And I don’t need a bunch of cash and jewelry that can be traced.’ Nicky nodded at the bag. ‘That’s what she wants.’
Brooks relaxed his grip and let his brother throw the bag. ‘Now you.’ Nicky opened the zipper on his holdall and the two brothers saw a mass of loose bills packed in between some jewelry boxes. He closed it, then put it on the path between them and bent to shove the bag towards the two brothers. In the meantime, Brooks looked down at the red dot on his chest, then up at Nicky again. His hand was curled around the grip of a pistol hidden in his waistband under his shirt; the laser was the only thing preventing him from pulling it and blowing Reyes’ head off.
But they had the money. Billy reached down and opened the bag; both brothers could see the significant amount of cash inside. The younger Loughlin then opened some of the boxes to see necklaces, earrings, and bracelets glinting up at them.
‘We’ll find yo-’ Brooks started to say, looking back up, but in the few seconds he and Billy had been distracted by the sight of the money and jewelry, he saw Nicky had taken a couple of items from his pocket.
In one hand was a lighter, a flame already sparked.
And in the other was a set of firecrackers.
A second later, the roll landed at the Loughlins’ feet, hissing as the crackers burned towards the end of a clipped, very short fuse.
Outside the Arrivals hall at Syracuse-Hancock airport just as this was happening, Archer watched Marquez approach the car with her bag in tow, and after putting it on the back seat, she opened the passenger door before climbing in slowly, clearly still in pain from her hard fall out of the window earlier in the day.
Once inside, she glanced over and saw him looking at the inch-wide bandage wrapped around her head. ‘Not one word,’ she told him, seeing his eyes fix on where the hair had been buzzed down, parts of it visible above and below the bandage.
‘It’ll grow back.’
‘That’s three words.’
He laughed, just relieved to see she was OK. On the doctor’s advice, Marquez had planned to stay in Cleveland for at least another day or so to give herself time to recover, but then she’d learned of the attempt on Archer at the auto-shop so had promptly discharged herself from the hospital and headed straight to the city’s main airport. They’d swapped notes about the attacks on them both while Marquez was waiting for her direct flight and had come to the conclusion that the same people had to be responsible. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise. The two bastards had almost snuffed them both out.
‘The doc was OK with letting you fly after a head injury?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t bash my head,’ she said. ‘It was glass on the awning from my window. Cut me open when I landed. Was only stunned for a few moments.’
‘But you’re good?’
‘I’m sore,’ she admitted. ‘And got the mother of all headaches. But I’m here.’ She’d had her gun logged and removed from her possession by cabin staff for the flight, handed back to her in a sealed bag once they’d landed. She took it out of the bag she’d placed it in to walk through the airport and ripped open the plastic before reloading the magazine and slotting it back into the scratched Smith and Wesson. ‘The doc just told me to stay clear of windows for a while.’ But after she made the comment, she kept the gun in her hand for a moment; Archer saw she was staring straight ahead. ‘They were good.’
‘They were.’
‘If I hadn’t stepped out the shower, I’d be dead.’ She paused. ‘You get a look at them?’
‘I tried. Every time I raised my head they tried to put three bullets into it.’
‘We’re supposed to be the ones tracking people, not the other way around. You got any guesses?’
‘I’m thinking about it,’ he said, putting the car into Drive. ‘But wherever our Gatlin boys are, it can’t have been them. They need to be trying to keep a low profile. Whoever was using us as target practice certainly wasn’t doing that.’
Even though Nicky had successfully slid the bag full of money under the fence on the east side, he’d left the revolver he’d been carrying with Kat just in case, as protection. But to face the Loughlins he’d needed something other than the Leatherman tool knife, and that proved vital when a man who’d moved out from a nearby stall tried to intercept him as Nicky ran from Brooks and Billy, the firecrackers at their feet starting to go off and creating the diversion he’d intended.
When the stranger went to grab him, Nicky recognized the guy immediately from the Gatlin meeting hall a few days ago, the same man who’d visited Brooks when Kat had laid out her misguided plan to Nicky. The guard at the gate had checked the pen inside Nicky’s pocket, but had failed to check the inside; Nicky had known the brothers would try something so he’d already unscrewed it, the inner metal tube designed to hold ink cartridges sharpened to a point, something he’d learned from Prez who’d used an identical weapon during Nicky’s first night in Gatlin to stop him being raped by Billy and Hoffmeier.
When the guy here at the fairground twelve years later snapped forward and gripped Nicky’s collar with one hand, pulling out a knife with the other, the Gatlin fugitive was faster and stabbed the pen hard all the way through the man’s hand.
He yowled in pain. The poppers were attracting a lot of attention now, which had been Nicky’s intention, so with his
attacker off-balance and focused on his sudden injury, he shoved him out of his way and ran on into the crowd. Knowing the Loughlins as well as he did, Nicky had banked everything on the fact the brothers’ priority would be to get the money and jewelry out rather than come after him. Security guards were already rushing towards the origin of the noise, just as he’d hoped, and there were enough of them to overpower the brothers which was his other goal, aside from getting this titanium lockbox of Kat’s back.
He left the fairground through a different stall so the people who let him in didn’t see how quickly he was leaving after arriving less than half an hour ago, this time with the addition of a bag. He raced across the lot, and found Kat waiting for him inside Barry Marsh’s Audi, but then the sound of the firecrackers was replaced by the much harsher sound of gunshots, shotgun blasts and screams.
‘Did you…get it?’ she asked anxiously.
‘I got it!’ he said, starting the engine then driving the Audi to the gate and back out onto the road.
FORTY TWO
Nicky and Kat were soon speeding away from the fairground, heading north on Route 690, when they saw a police cruiser approaching from the opposite direction. Kat was lying on the backseat clutching the new bag on her lap; the first time she’d had the contents of the safe deposit box in her possession since Blair had managed to establish temporary ownership of it five years ago, after her stepdaughter was convicted of drug charges and sent to prison.
Up front, Nicky watched the County Sheriff’s vehicle coming towards them then pass by. ‘Keep going,’ he urged the cop car, his eyes following it in the rear-view mirror.
