Rampage
Page 42
“But you couldn’t let it go,” Tony shouted. “You love the power it took to beat them. The Howard Hughes of Atlantic City!”
“I–”
“How about the Al Capone of Chicago? Why not the Mussolini of Italy?”
Taggart stared back as long as he could. What could he say? For Helen? Partly. But as much for himself, he had to admit. A castle in Europe was a fantasy. He had to work. He had to build buildings. And what a temptation to build them without restraint.
“Do you deny it?”
“You’ve got it on tape,” he admitted. For a long moment the only sounds he heard were the taxi’s tires pounding asphalt and a bubbling murmur from its rusty muffler.
“Maybe that’s the crime of revenge,” Tony said softly. “It feels too good to stop.”
Turning away, Taggart suddenly thought he saw his father standing at the bars of a prison cell. The image was so real— Mike Taglione had his coat over his arm and his eyes were dismayed, even as he tried to offer an encouraging smile.
“Chris?... Chris!”
The hallucination dispersed, and Tony was there again, beside him in the cab. Taggart’s hands began to shake with a violence that frightened him. He looked at the plastic shield and the windshield beyond. His Spire was growing tall in the distance.
“What is it?” he asked dully.
“We’ve got you cold,” Tony whispered. “It’s just a matter of time. If you don’t cooperate, Arthur will put you away a lot more than twenty years. He’ll put you inside forever. And my outift will have to help him.”
Tony’s whisper faded, like the voice of a child on the verge of tears. Taggart abruptly realized he would never get out of this. Fight as he would, the Strikeforce would put him in prison. There was no way to win. His hands were still shaking.
Tony noticed. “We gotta talk,” he said. “Make the best deal for you. Chris, it’s all I can do.”
Quickly, as the cab snaked through the Helmsley Building and up Park Avenue, Tony described in detail the range of information that Arthur Finch would require to cut a cooperation agreement.
“There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know. I didn’t walk around with a gun in my hand.”
“Okay, who does know?”
Taggart shrugged. “Talk to Jack Warner.”
“We already have. Who’s Reggie Rand?”
“Forget it.”
“Chris, this is your life.”
“Sorry. I don’t turn in my friends.”
“Do Chryl and Vicky have anything to do with it?”
“Christ, no.”
“Sylvia? Your supers?”
“No. The business is legit.”
“It turns on Rand, doesn’t it?”
“Forget it.”
“You have to make a deal. You’ll go away forever if Arthur takes you to trial.”
The cab slowed in heavy traffic and Taggart sank into a deep silence that lasted, despite Tony’s exhortations, until they finally arrived at the construction gate. There he surprised Tony, exploding back to life, tossing money at the cab driver, springing onto the sidewalk with all eyes for the job. Like their father, Tony thought; the boss—just like Mike Taglione.
Already Chris was charging through the gate. Tony scrambled after him, as he used to try to keep pace with the two of them. He caught up when Chris beckoned a foreman. “Charley, it’s your ass if that dumpster catches fire. Get it out of Here!”
“Sorry, Chris, the truck’s on its way.”
“Fuckin’ better be. How’s the kids?”
“They’re trying out for Little League.”
“Talk to Sylvia about uniforms. Hey, this is my brother, Tony. Maybe you can get the U.S. Attorney to sponsor a team, too.”
The foreman, who read the newspapers, stared. Tony grabbed two hardhats and followed Chris into the site and aboard an outside hoist which had already started rising. As it clanked up the nearly completed building—ten, twenty, forty, eighty floors—Taggart grew pensive again as the city thrust crisp edges into the deepening afternoon light.
“I’ll miss this,” he said softly. “This time of day the sunlight makes the buildings better than the guy who built them. For a second, each stands alone.” He smiled at Tony as the elevator stopped. “And that’s when the whole thing looks best.”
The roof was deep in fresh, white pea gravel. They crossed to the edge and climbed onto the only bare steel remaining, the new beams replacing those damaged in the attack on Taggart’s cantilevered penthouse. He walked a narrow header to the far edge and rested against a column that stood alone. Tony caught up, swung gracefully around him, and leaned on the other side. The wind plucked at their jackets, tugged their hair. Tony slapped the steel. “What’s this?”
“I had to pull a header that got creamed in the accident— which it wasn’t, by the way; Don Richard sent a guy to kill Helen—so I figured what the hell, while I’m making repairs I’ll add a room.” He started to make a joke about slipping an unauthorized floor past the mayor, but suddenly the grief he had felt since Atlantic City swelled and rolled over him like a wave. He could only manage to say, “It was supposed to be a surprise—a little music room in the clouds.”
Tony gathered his resolve and forced himself to look at Chris’s face. He leaned around the column and saw what he had feared for days. There were guys who made it through prison and guys who couldn’t. His brother would waste away like a tethered eagle.
“How could you be so stupid as to trust Helen Rizzolo?”
Taggart looked at him, puzzled, as the words sank in. “You’re not talking about right and wrong, now. You’re talking about getting caught.”
“You heard me.” Tony was trembling. “How could you be so stupid? She handed me your ass on a silver platter.”
“I’m not sorry I fell in love.”
Sweat glazed Tony’s palms. They were suddenly so wet that his grip began to slide on the steel. He dried them on his trousers and grabbed hold again. He was the only force on earth that could save Chris, but it would cost him everything he believed in. He tried again to make something work.
“Listen. If I could maybe persuade Arthur to come down a few years, would you give him what he needs? You know, maybe you’d get out on parole in a few years.”
“I can’t give him Reggie Rand.”
Tony wiped his palms again. “I didn’t think so, ” he whispered.
Chris felt his brother’s hand, and looked down as Tony pressed a slim blue booklet into his palm.
“Take it!”
Taggart stared, utterly astonished. It was his passport.
“I’ll give you three hours.” Tony’s lean face was working, his dark gaze opaque. “Three hours. Get on a plane. Go away. Don’t ever come back.”
“What happens to you?”
“It’s a little late to start worrying about that. Go! From what I know already, you can disappear in style.”
Taggart thumbed the stiff pages. The wind seized them, flipping them like a slick-fingered dealer; the entry stamps of two dozen nations were a blueprint of all he had done to avenge his father. Now it was he who leaned around the column to see his brother’s face. The tic was leaping in Tony’s cheek, and the fire in his eyes was going out.
“What about the law?”
“I can’t make it fit you.”
“What about your office? What about the Strikeforce?”
“I can handle it.”
“No, you can’t. The law is your family, like Pop was my family. You can’t betray it.”
“Only for you.”
Tony’s need to sacrifice hit Taggart like a sledgehammer. “That’s how I felt about Pop! That’s why I did it.”
“Go!”
“No. I can’t let you pay my dues.” He tried to wedge the passport between the steel and Tony’s fingers. Tony jerked his hand away.
“Don’t be crazy, Bro. You’ll spend the best part of your life in jail.”
Taggart shuddered. Helen would
make a loyal visit once a week, forever. For in a terrible, relentless way he would become part of her family and she would serve him. But he could no sooner ask that of her than let Tony betray himself.
“If I run, you’ll be finished with the law. And dead in your heart.”
Taggart retreated to his side of the pillar and gazed at the city. His eye fell on beauty wherever it roved—the exultant skyline, the sunlit forms, their shiny-colored glass skins, new concrete racing upward. He leaned out to see the ground. A quarter-mile down, Park Avenue was a broad river between shores of glass. Long beds of daffodils drifted down the middle of the avenue like a string of yellow barges. So much to remember.
“But you’ll die in prison,” Tony pleaded. “Let me do this for you.”
Taggart knelt on the header and tucked the passport within the flange of the pillar where it was safe from the wind. He arose lightly, cupped his brother’s face in his big hand. “I think it’s more than I deserve.”
“Chris!"
Tony reached for him, but it was too late.
“I love you,” Taggart said, stepping into the sky.
EPILOGUE
SAINTS AVENGED,
ANGELS SEDUCED
(Two Months Later)
A white Rolls-Royce drifted slowly down Mott Street.
Jack Warner was out of breath, having toiled up the Mosco Street hill on his regular route from Police Plaza to Hunam House. His mind was on a stiff drink and a cold Chinese beer, so he didn’t notice the limousine until they met in front of the restaurant.
“Jack!”
Warner flinched. Reggie Rand was sitting in the limousine.
Caught flatfooted, Warner knew he couldn’t run, so he did the only thing possible. He charged, hurled himself into the passenger compartment, and rammed his gun into Reggie’s belly.
“Jack! Easy.”
Instead of a pistol, Reggie was holding an old-fashioned glass, and he looked and smelled like he had had a few. Warner frisked him thoroughly, nonetheless, but his ankle gun was gone, as were the holster and a throwing knife he sometimes carried in the back of his belt. “Would you like a drink?”
Warner closed the door and holstered his weapon. The partition was up, the driver invisible, and the air-conditioning made the car comfortably cool. “What are you doing in New York? Half the feds in America are looking for you.”
“Tying up some loose ends. I saw you on the street and thought—”
“Where’d you get the car? I thought the Feds confiscated it.”
“We maintained several in the event we were followed. In fact,” Reggie added dryly, “I recall we lost you a couple of times that way. Whiskey?”
Warner nodded, debating whether to arrest the Brit himself. Tough decision. He was valuable either way. Unless he was over the hill, in which case he was worth more in jail. He studied him as Reggie opened the bar, refilled his own glass first with a shaky hand, and poured another for him, neat.
“What shall we drink to?” Reggie asked with an ironic glance, tossing his whiskey back. “Survivors?”
“Okay. Survivors.”
“Have the other half,” Reggie said, pouring again. “Ice this time?”
“Yeah.”
“Pardon my fingers. Someone pinched the bloody tongs.”
Warner took a long sip and sat back to let the stuff do its work. Better... much better. No denying Reggie had scared the hell out of him—nice reflexes, though. Even if it had been a rubout, he might have saved himself by his quick action.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Got anything lined up?”
“I’m not really sure,” Reggie replied. “This has all been rather a sudden shock.”
“Well, if you get something, stay in touch. You know?”
Reggie swirled his glass and stared owlishly into the liquor. He drank some more, refilled, and added a splash to Warner’s.
“Funny thing,” Warner said, breaking the silence.
“Funny?”
“The wise guys always say, ‘Never trust a woman.’”
“Helen? Oh, I don’t know about that. Her family came first. That was her code and one has to respect the fact that she adhered to it.”
“Italian women never forget. Screw them once and they make you pay. He musta done something to her.”
Reggie put down his glass. “Whatever there was between Helen Rizzolo and Mr. Taggart, Helen sacrificed to save her brother. One must respect her strength as well as her... honesty?”
“She turned the guy in.”
“She honored the greater whole. That is far different from treachery for one’s own sake. Different from squealing on Mr. Taggart purely for your own advantage.”
“What?”
“Jack, Mr. Taggart would have beaten the charge if his brother had not received additional evidence. Evidence which only you or I could have supplied... I didn’t.”
The car started moving.
Warner reached in his jacket and touched his gun. “You got some crazy idea of doing something about it? Hey, fellow, you’re talking to a cop. I’ll blow your head off and deliver the carcass to the nearest station house.”
“You betrayed your badge. You betrayed your fellow officers. And you betrayed Mr. Taggart. All for Jack and only for Jack. You serve no one.... I might feel sorry for you if your selfish treachery hadn’t destroyed my friend.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
Reggie raised his arm, wincing as if it had been hurt recently, and slid the French cuff off his wristwatch. A sweep timing hand was whirling around the face. He pressed a stud and the hand stopped, quivering. “It’s already done.”
Warner blinked. Reggie seemed suddenly very sober. The car slowed for a red light. Chinese people and tourists wandered by, gazing blankly at the mirrored windows.
Warner’s throat felt tight. He looked at the drink. “Tastes funny.”
“It’s the poison,” Reggie said gravely.
Warner reached for the door. It was four or five miles away. Reggie appeared to be falling down a deep hole, getting smaller and smaller. When Warner tried to speak, his voice was a whisper, and it hurt terribly. He pried a question like a claw from his throat. “How come you didn’t just shoot me?”
In answer, Reggie lowered the chauffeur’s partition, and Warner saw to his astonishment that the Englishman had a new boss. Helen Rizzolo turned from the wheel, her silky black hair cascading from a chauffeur’s cap.
“That wasn’t a choice I could live with,” she said. “Mr. Taggart would have wanted you to know that he had been avenged.”
“You won it all” were Warner’s dying words.
And perhaps, thought Reggie, Helen had—what little Taggart had left of it—but her somber eyes were dark with a thousand years of sorrow, her voice as lonely as the stars.
BOOKS AS PAUL GARRISON
THRILLERS & SEA STORIES
Fire And Ice
Red Sky At Morning
Buried At Sea
Sea Hunter
The Ripple Effect
The Janson Command
The Janson Option
AS J.S. BLAZER
MYSTERIES
Deal Me Out
Lend a Hand
AS ALEXANDER COLE
THRILLER
The Auction
ISAAC BELL NOVELS WITH CLIVE CUSSLER
The Wrecker
The Spy
The Race
The Thief
The Striker
The Bootlegger
The Assassin
The Gangster
The Cutthroat
BOOKS BY JUSTlN SCOTT
THRILLERS
The Shipkiller
The Turning
Normandie Triangle
A Pride Of Royals Rampage
The Nine Dragons
The Empty Eye Of The Sea
(Published in England)
The Auction (Published in England)
Treasure Isla
nd: A Modern Novel
MYSTERIES
Many Happy Returns
Treasure for Treasure
The Widow of Desire
BEN ABBOTT MYSTERIES
HardScape
StoneDust
FrostLine
McMansion
Mausoleum
RAMPAGE
Pegasus Books Ltd
148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 1986 by Justin Scott
Foreword copyright © 2017 by Lee Child
First Pegasus Books hardcover edition May 2017
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ISBN: 978-1-68177-406-0
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