by Louis Begley
I unpacked rapidly upstairs, brought my laptop into the studio, turned on the electric heat to take the chill off, and sat down to write. For less than an hour, I suppose, I was so deep in my text that I wonder whether an aura would have warned me of Jovan’s approach.
I was brought back to current reality by the ringing of my iPhone, which I had put on the desk.
A man’s voice, a voice I didn’t know.
Mr. Dana? Jack Dana?
Yes, this is he.
This is Jonathan Krohn, Heidi’s father, Mr. Dana. An awful thing has happened. A truck rammed into Heidi. Practically head-on, on the driver’s side. She’s at the Southampton Hospital, bruised and badly shaken up, but no other injuries. She told me she’d like you to come over. Your car’s been totaled. The truck ran away.
I’ll be there in twenty minutes.
XI
Hours later, Sasha said, What do you think? Shall I turn on the TV? We’ll catch the nine o’clock news. They should have something to say about what happened. We’ll have dessert and coffee afterward. I’ll get the Riverhead station. It’s the best for local news.
She was right. The platinum-blonde anchor’s newscast began with the attempted murder on Route 114.
On the segment of Route 114 between Sag Harbor and East Hampton, she intoned, a stolen white Chevy Silverado rammed a black 2012 Volvo station wagon driven by Heidi Krohn, thirty-one, a prominent New York City attorney and daughter of East Hampton resident and fashion-industry mogul Jonathan Krohn and his wife, Helen Krohn. WLNY-TV has been able to reconstruct the crime scene based on eyewitness interviews. Krohn’s station wagon was approaching Stephen Hands Path when the pickup truck, which until then was several vehicles behind her, activated an emergency red light on its roof and a siren, jumped into the left-hand lane, and, going at a speed estimated at ninety to ninety-five miles per hour, overtook Krohn, did a U-turn, and traveling at even greater speed rammed Krohn’s vehicle head-on. A man jumped out of the truck and, with a firearm in his hand, ran to the Volvo, looked inside it, shook his head, and got back into the truck, which did another U-turn and sped east on Route 114 before turning south on Stephen Hands Path. WLNY has spoken to Cynthia Mooney, schoolteacher, of Amagansett, whose Honda was directly behind Krohn’s Volvo.
A video of a thirtyish woman was shown at this point, speaking into a mike held by a male reporter.
I’ve never been so scared in my life! she declared. Thank God the brakes on my Honda held when I hit them. I was right behind that Volvo, and I had a good look at the guy with the gun. He was wearing some sort of ski mask. I almost had a heart attack.
Several eyewitnesses, the anchor continued, had the presence of mind to write down the number on the Silverado’s Florida license plate. According to the East Hampton police, a quick computer check established that the truck was stolen earlier in the day from the Hertz lot at the Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton. After the incident on Route 114, the Silverado, its left fender and headlight bashed in, was found abandoned in the vicinity of the East Hampton Airport. Still according to East Hampton police, Krohn was saved by the airbags that opened upon impact. She was in shock when the ambulance arrived and had suffered bruises, but after a battery of tests and a period of observation was discharged earlier this evening from the Southampton Hospital. A family spokesman declined to make her or any family member available to the press. After this experience, he stated, Heidi and her parents need privacy.
The Volvo that Krohn was driving belongs to Jack C. Dana, bestselling novelist and Sag Harbor resident. Reached at the Southampton Hospital where he was visiting Krohn, Dana stated that he had lent her his car. He declined to make any other comment.
This is pretty much what Heidi said about what she could observe, I told Sasha. She’s very clearheaded and very courageous.
Thank God she’s courageous, Sasha answered, covering her face with her hands. This is the worst story I’ve ever heard. Those people wanted to kill. Why her? Who is this person driving the truck? Do you understand what’s going on?
I certainly don’t know who he is, I said, but I’ve no doubt whatsoever about what he is. He’s a hit man. A professional murderer. He must have been told to make one hundred percent sure that the job had been completed—that’s why he was going to shoot the driver of the Volvo if he wasn’t already dead. A smart precaution, seeing that Heidi came out of the wreck essentially unscathed! But when the shooter got to my Volvo, he saw he’d followed the wrong car, or for some reason the wrong person was driving it. So, being a real pro, the guy didn’t kill Heidi just for the hell of it, just because she happened to be in the car. He hadn’t been hired to do that. For all he knew, his employer wouldn’t appreciate it.
I wasn’t going to tell Sasha—and I hadn’t told Mr. Krohn—that the killer was following the right car. My car. Only he expected me to be inside, not some woman he knew nothing about. He would have been worried sick that he’d somehow fucked up and would have to answer to a pissed-off boss. Shaken up though she was, Heidi hadn’t missed a beat. She understood completely what had happened. As soon as her father and mother left us to get their car and bring it to the emergency department’s entrance, she took my hand and said, The guy driving that truck thought he was going to kill you! He and his buddies will come after you again. Tonight!
They might, I answered, but I’ll be ready for them, and if you feel up to it we’ll tell war stories tomorrow over dinner in the city.
On Route 114! Sasha wailed. Between Sag Harbor and East Hampton! This sort of thing—gangland murders, gangsters settling accounts—it didn’t used to happen here. Not since the Prohibition, when bootleggers ran their launches into Three Mile Harbor. Poor Harry never locked his front door. He didn’t think it was necessary. Maybe he should have. I still don’t lock mine.
We were back in the dining room. For dessert, she’d gotten from her and Harry’s favorite caterer in Sagaponack a prune tart that was by my reckoning big enough for eight. We hardly made a dent in it. She said she’d keep a piece for her dinner tomorrow; the rest I was to take with me. I knew better than to argue.
That poor child! Sasha continued, after she’d put coffee on the table. I’d have so liked to meet her. I don’t suppose she’s in any shape to stop by tomorrow.
I told her that I’d urged Heidi to stay with her parents overnight and go to the city with them—especially as I’d overheard some talk about taking their helicopter—in which case I’d drive her Mini back and deliver it to her garage.
It’s a pleasure to deal with the superrich, I continued. Once Mr. and Mrs. Krohn decided that Heidi was all right and they could stop worrying about her, Mr. Krohn, all noblesse oblige, shifted his attention to the terrible inconvenience of my car having been wrecked. And right away he found a solution. They have a sort of ancien régime steward by the name of Mahoney who manages their place on Further Lane. Makes sure everything is in perfect condition and runs perfectly. He said he’s putting Mahoney on the case, and Mahoney will handle it all, the insurance claim and, this is the best, if I will allow him, buying a new car and delivering it to me. All I have to do is decide whether I still like black or want some other color! And of course, until the new car is delivered, I’m welcome to use one from the Krohn stable—which Mahoney will also be happy to deliver to me. Oh, and he’s already had my car towed. I don’t know where. He figured it out. What do you think of that?
I like it, she said, they sound like nice people. I’m glad you’ve found this girl. What happened to Kerry was so dreadful, so unexpected, but in life one has to learn to move on. You’re a very young man, you’ve been through so much, you’re really entitled to be happy. You can go on loving Kerry’s memory, but don’t be like Harry after he lost his Olga.
My uncle had been something of a lady’s man. His long love affairs with beautiful and glamorous women had never led to marriage, either because the lady was already married and for one reason or another wouldn’t divorce or, in the case of a
famous ballerina, because she thought her career made marrying Harry the wrong choice. Then, working on a project for Abner Brown, Harry met a spellbinding Peruvian lawyer proud of her Indian blood. He called her his Inca; she became his obsession. They decided to get married, but less than three months before the wedding date Olga was killed by a bomb attack launched in Lima by the Shining Path insurgency. Harry never stopped mourning her. He told me a wall of ice built up around him, gradually sealing him off from human contact.
Thank you for saying this, Sasha, I answered. I don’t want to live in an igloo like Harry, and I do like Heidi a lot. But not like that. She likes me too—but also not like that. That’s the situation. We’re stuck with it.
Now, now, don’t be pessimistic, she told me, and bring her to see me as soon as you can.
I promised I would, kissed her, took the box with the tart, and went through her garden to the gate leading into mine.
—
The day had been overcast, and it was followed by a pitch-dark night. Nevertheless, I declined Sasha’s offer of a flashlight.
Out of the question, I told her, we Force Recon veterans are like cats. No night is black enough for us. I might have added—but didn’t—Particularly when we’re wearing night-vision goggles.
Instead, before passing through the gate I paused to accustom my eyes to the dark and conscientiously scanned the garden and the house. Nothing. No unwonted shapes lurking among the bushes. No visible change in the house. From the outside, it was as I’d left it, lit dimly so as to confuse, I hoped, anyone trying to guess which room I was in or whether, indeed, I was at home. For the same reason, I’d put the Mini in the garage and shut the garage door. No one could tell from the outside whether the car was there. I’d locked the front door, contrary to my well-advertised habit, and I’d latched all the ground-floor windows. I didn’t think that the thug sent to finish the botched job on Route 114 would bother with anything fancy. There would be no attempts to stage an accident, such as Slobo’s plan to set fire to the studio while I was asleep in it, or to stage a fake suicide. No cat-and-mouse games, no opportunity for me to take advantage of Felix the Cat’s moments of distraction. This would be an old-fashioned Murder, Inc., job: a breakin, followed by a gangland-style shooting. Or he’d use explosives—a satchel charge thrown in through a window, and poof!—a typical nineteenth-century Sag Harbor residence is reduced to rubble. Firemen find buried under it the corpse of Jack Dana, cut down before his time. Well, fuckheads, I’d make sure it didn’t happen! But for that I needed the use of both hands. The idea of going first to the studio crossed my mind. I dismissed it. The studio was a cul-de-sac. I needed corners, angles, and command of the house. There was a stone bench to the right of the garden door. I set Sasha’s tart down on it and drew the .45 from my waistband. I was pretty sure I had a round in the chamber, but this was no time for errors. As silently as possible, I drew the slide back. Yes, the round was there. I sprinted, crouching, to the French doors leading from the garden into the main house.
No sooner was I framed by the lit open door than he fired—and missed. Not by much. The bullet whizzed so close to my head it might have singed my hair. I threw myself on the ground and crawled into the house, keeping my face turned toward the garden and the shooter. Crack! This time he got me, in the right thigh. And this time I saw the flash at the end of the barrel. So that was it: a sniper with a high-powered rifle and a night-vision scope sitting in a tree in back of the parking lot of the church to the right of Harry’s house! I howled like ten dying banshees. Built up to a big crescendo. Then silence. Let the bastard figure it out. Probably he couldn’t. He’d know he hit me because I screamed and perhaps because he could see the sudden movement of my body after the impact, that’s all. How he managed to miss me on the first shot, why he fired single rounds, I couldn’t figure. Or maybe I could: one of those snipers with a swelled head but not very gifted. Not like Eric, the sniper turned bouncer. Now he was firing again, to make up for lost time. Crack! Crack! I felt my thigh. Flesh wound, the bone seemed all right; the bullet had gone straight through. The pain wasn’t bad, but I was bleeding like a son of a bitch. I hoped he hadn’t gotten the femoral artery. Tourniquet, tourniquet! I didn’t have time for games. Just a few precious minutes to take care of the wound and get ready for the fucker’s visit. The silence could mean one thing only: he’d climbed down from the tree and was on his way to check out the house.
Getting up was the easy part. Grabbing furniture for support and leaving a trail of blood on Mary’s beautifully polished floor, I made my way toward the front door. On the way I snatched from the tote hanging in the hall my Ka-Bar and some extra rounds of ammo, and from the umbrella stand one of Harry’s canes. The cane was a big help. I unlocked the front door. Welcome! Welcome! On to the kitchen. Once there, I cut off my trouser leg, made bandage strips out of a dishtowel, and applied a tourniquet. Fortunately the wound wasn’t too high on the leg, and the blood wasn’t spurting. He hadn’t cut an artery, probably only a big vein, and the tourniquet slowed down the bleeding a lot. Now if only the bastard—I hoped he didn’t have a colleague—would get over here, we could finish our business. I wasn’t sure how long I could wait. The cell phone was in my pocket. I checked: it was charged and I had coverage. Prudence—common sense—told me to call 911. But Captain Dana the warrior said, Fuck! Don’t want cops barging in and scaring this bastard off. If they do we’ll never see him again. And if they arrive the same time as he does and catch him, what’s next? He’ll be up for what? Attempted murder? Not good enough for me. I made it to the dining room, from where I had an unobstructed view of the front door. Crouching on the floor was hell. I took a chair, dragged it over to the wall right next to the door, and sat down in it. He wouldn’t be able to see me when he came in, but I would see him perfectly in the big horizontal mirror hanging over the sideboard.
Toc toc toc…It wasn’t the grandfather clock; it wasn’t my heart; it was the pulse above the tourniquet. Move it, goon! The minutes passed slowly. Finally, I heard it: someone very cautiously turning the doorknob.
The mirror reflected all I needed to see. The door opened bit by bit and then entirely. In it stood a man dressed in a black running suit, a black ski mask, and black lace-up boots. The same size and shape as my most recent running mate in Central Park. No rifle—he must have left it somewhere outside, perhaps in his car, perhaps outside the door—but in his hand he had what looked to me like a Glock. He remained motionless. Listening? Thinking? A step forward. He closed the door behind him and shouted, OK, asshole—you say you want meet Jovan? Jovan’s here, asshole! Come out here, piece of shit! This time I kill. No fuck around.
No fucking around! The bastard took the words out of my mouth. I remained silent and let him advance.
He yelled again, Come out here, dead piece of shit! Come out here, make it easy for Jovan!
The adrenaline flow helped, but I was beginning to feel weak and less and less sure of my aim.
As if on cue, he advanced again still yelling. You’re roadkill, asshole.
Now he was in my reduced range. I swiveled in my chair, braced the pistol, called out to him, You’re wrong, Jovan, and fired. Bingo! I got him where I wanted, in the right kneecap. The bastard was on the floor on his good side writhing with pain but managed to squeeze off a burst from the Glock in my general direction.
You’re wasting ammo, Jovan, I told him. If you want to live, slide that Glock along the floor in my direction. You won’t be needing it anymore. I’ll count to three. If you don’t do it, I’ll kill you. ONE—TWO—
Somehow he struggled to his knees and fired again, two rounds this time, more accurately but still missing me. I fired too, one round. Bingo again. I got him in the belly.
All right, Jovan baby, I said, stomach wounds are bad. You’re going to die. So talk to me. You’re the asshole who makes telephone calls?
So what!
So nothing. You’ve got a nice sense of humor. You’re also the prick wh
o beat up my housekeeper?
The nigger? Yeah, I beat her. Stupid bitch, yelling and screaming.
I don’t know how he mustered the strength, but he sat up and fired again. I’d gotten too confident, exposing my left shoulder, and that’s where his bullet struck. He gave a weird whoop and fired again. So did I. This time he missed. I didn’t. Smack between the eyes. R.I.P., Jovan.
The landline telephone rang. I staggered over, picked up the receiver, and said, Hi Sasha, sorry for the fireworks. Everything’s under control….
The next day, when she came to see me at the hospital, she told me that after I’d said those words the telephone went dead on my end. She didn’t dare to rush over. Instead, she called the police. It was lucky that she did and that, it being nighttime, the ambulance was able to get there not long after the cruiser. I was unconscious from loss of blood. Jovan, of course, was dead.
—
The shootout at my house—I was getting used to calling it mine rather than Harry’s now that I’d killed in it twice—made an even bigger splash on WLNY than the crash on Route 114, and it made the New York Times online Breaking News. Both Heidi and my agent told me later that it was all over the media, Wall Street Journal, tabloids, the Daily Beast, and TV talk shows included. The themes were what you’d expect: a gangland attack on a bestselling novelist and war hero in the normally quiet and crimeless village of Sag Harbor, speculations about a possible motive and the connection between the attack and my car being rammed on Route 114 some hours earlier, and, in some accounts but not all, questions about a possible link between these attacks and the assault on me at the same Sag Harbor house in the spring of 2012. Some featured more or less florid encomia to my courage and martial skills honed in the U.S. Marine Corps and deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The police had hardly any questions for me after I killed Slobo. This time I received in my Southampton Hospital room an afternoon visit of two detectives, one with the town of Southampton and the other with the Suffolk County police, accompanied by a young Suffolk County assistant district attorney. Beyond describing the attack, I told them, feeling Martin Sweeney’s virtual presence at my elbow, that whether there was a connection between the incident on Route 114 and the attack at my house was a matter of conjecture, my own belief being that there was, that yes, I had received threats—I repeated almost verbatim what I had told Detective Walker after Jeanette was attacked—and no, I hadn’t asked for police protection. Why? I felt I could take care of myself. That gave the three representatives of the forces of law and order an occasion for unrestrained hilarity and put an end to what might be thought of as a formal interrogation. Would I get in touch with them if any information came to me that could cast light on the reason for the attack and identify Jovan’s employer or employers? I assured them I most certainly would. They in turn told me that a check of Jovan’s fingerprints against various databases revealed his full name—Jovan Babić—and an extensive Serbian and Interpol file. He was wanted, with warrants outstanding for his arrest, on a rich assortment of charges, murder, drug dealing, illegal sale of organs for transplants, and human trafficking. A dossier not dissimilar to Goran’s. Jovan entered the United States on a tourist visa in 2009. That detail reminded me of Slobo, that other Serbian tourist. I expressed surprise at criminals’ finding access to the U.S. so easy. Fucking Homeland Security, proffered the Suffolk County detective. Their screening isn’t worth shit.
