I smoothed the edge of the blanket. "You're welcome to stay as long as you want, you know."
She smiled wider. "Thanks, Marty. Maybe until after New Years, if you don't mind."
"That'd be fine. I don't think Pierre would tolerate anything less."
"Ohmygod," she said, bringing her hands to her face. "He hasn't been fed all day. I've got to run."
"Don't spoil him too much, okay?" I said. "I'm not going to be able to pick him up with just the one arm, pretty soon."
"Quit worrying, Marty," she said. "I've got him eating out of the palm of my hand."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
She shook her fist at me, then followed it with a peck on the cheek. A quick wave and she was gone.
I lay there, empty-headed. The TV was on, running an endless stream of holiday specials, but the sound was muted, and I watched the flashing images blankly, without comprehension. Julie found me like that ten minutes later, staring at the TV like it was trying to tell me something, but failing.
"What was that about?" I asked.
"I caught up with Detective Michaels, asked him to keep me in the loop," she said. "No way am I going to let them pin anything on you or me or Amanda just for trying to keep ourselves alive."
"Thanks," I said and looked away.
"What's wrong?" she asked, moving closer.
I didn't say anything.
She sat on the edge the bed. "Are you feeling weird about us? If you are, we can go slow. Once you get out of here, get through chemo…" Her voice trailed off as she saw my face.
I cleared my throat. "You know when you run your hand along a smooth piece of wood and you feel a snag but you can't really see it? A little imperfection that you can't ignore? Everything looks good, but there's something wrong and you have to look close to find it."
Julie said nothing.
"When I was out there, talking to Jim Ferrin, sitting in that madhouse, he said something. I was focusing more on what he had to say about the night Brenda was killed, but later I realized something else he'd said didn't add up. He admitted he had Landis in his pocket during the trial. That much I could guess. But then he said that Don was scared, that he wasn't sure he could sandbag the whole trial convincingly. Ferrin said he'd given him some extra insurance, something that would seal the deal. It's bothered me since then, but I wasn't sure why. It was that snag in the wood that I couldn't find. But now I think I know what it was. What Don's insurance was."
I stopped talking and stared at her but it was her turn to look away, out at the night where the wind was whipping the snow in mad flurries past the window. She plucked at the blanket at the foot of my bed. I thought she would stay like that forever.
She started to speak, so softly I could barely hear her. "It was my first real case. I was good and smart and I knew you had nothing solid on Wheeler and that, in the end, it wouldn't matter. Once the jury heard that tape or put the picture together from all the complaints she'd made, it would be over. Who was going to listen to me drone on about burden of proof after they heard that woman screaming into the phone?"
Julie got up, hugging her arms to her chest, and walked over to the window. "I remember thinking to myself that I'd put up a good fight and try to move on to the next one, if there was one. Then Don called. Told me he thought a grave injustice was being done to my client, that he couldn't live with himself if an innocent man went to jail. A real line of bullshit. After the first minute, it was obvious he was scared out of his mind, that someone was leaning on him."
I said nothing.
"He fed me everything. What his strategy would be, how he'd question the witnesses, the gaps he'd leave. But we both knew it wouldn't be enough. I told him he'd have to get rid of that tape or all the cross-examination in the world wasn't going to get Wheeler off."
"So he ditched it," I said.
"I didn't ask. Then the trial came along and I tore him to pieces. With his help. It wasn't easy. I knew Don from my time in the DA's office. It didn't feel good to see him put on a brave face while he waited for the next knife in the gut. While I dismembered his career."
We were both quiet for a moment. I felt hollow inside. "Did you know it was Ferrin pulling the strings?"
"No. Don never told me who it was."
"Were you curious when Don wound up dead?"
She shot me a look. "Of course. But, whatever it was that Ferrin had on him was bad enough to break him. Add on the secret that he'd thrown the trial, and the public knowledge that he'd lost a landmark case, and suddenly it's not too hard to imagine Don walking out in front of a train."
"Whatever lets you sleep at night," I said.
She opened her mouth, then shut it. I waited for her to say something, wanted her to say something. When she didn't, I went on.
"Once you knew Wheeler was dead, when you knew that we were up against Ferrin and his son, would that have been a good time, maybe, to tell me you'd figured out who had rigged the trial?"
She shook her head. "What did it matter at that point? You knew who you were up against. Better than I did. And if you're going to hold the trial against me, here's a news flash for you, Marty. Wheeler didn't kill Brenda Lane. So, the fact that I got him off turned out to be the right thing to do. Even if you don't like the way I did it."
She was right. And she was wrong. I wasn't a moralist. I'd seen more shades of gray in my life than most people. I knew how the world worked. But at the end of the day, you have to do the right things for the right reasons. At some gut level, there can't be tolerance for compromises or shortcuts. There was an absolute in there somewhere that I fumbled for, tried to pin down and describe so I could hold it up to her actions like a measuring stick. Nothing came to mind. No easy way to talk the wrongness away. All I know is that, when I looked at her, it wasn't right.
"Get out," I said.
She looked at me, then away, her eyes tearing up. She seemed ready to say something. I think I wanted her to. It came to me that this was the moment, the stark knife's edge when maybe it was time to hold on. To pull ourselves back, not push us over. A gesture, a look, one word from either of us would've done it.
But it wasn't going to happen. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. The moment came and went in silence. Julie grabbed her coat, walked to the door, and left. Christmas music wafted in again, then was clipped short. I watched the TV for a second, then turned my head on the pillow and watched the snow fall outside.
ix.
The nurse wheeled the old man by the bed, then left, taking up a spot just outside the door.
The old man looked around. His son's childhood bedroom had been turned into a hospital clinic. There were IV tubes and stacks of bandages and complicated-looking monitoring devices sitting on wheeled carts. He imagined the air was thick with a chemical odor, but his own battle with illness had long since made him unable to smell.
Lawrence was lying on his back. His eyes were slightly opened and glassy; his breathing was hard and his body convulsed after each breath. The old man looked down, then reached out and grabbed his son's hand. It was as much contact as he'd ever had with him.
The eyes opened a fraction. The old man thought of saying something, but his head was empty and he simply stared back. His son's lips moved and he wheeled himself closer to hear what it was he was trying to say. On the third try, he caught it, and when he did, he put his head down and rested it on the two hands clasping his son's.
He had said, "I'm starting over."
Acknowledgements
As with any debut novel, or any novel for that matter, an enormous number of people helped make the dream a reality.
First and foremost, my wife Renee has been patient and supportive from the start, through the middle, and no doubt to the end. I couldn't have even begun this whole shebang without her. Thank you, honey. I love you.
My family--Sally, Gary, and Kris Iden--has been a great source of energy and inspiration for me from the first time I picked up a pencil and started scri
bbling. Thanks, guys.
Frank Gallivan, Carie Rothenbacher, Amy and Pete Talbot, David Jacobstein, and Eleonora Ibrani were wonderful friends and readers throughout the process, never failing to ask how I was doing or where I stood with all of my mysterious writing endeavors. Karen Cantwell, Misha Crews, Jeff Ziskind, Angie Holtz, Shannon Ryan, Ana Bilik, Tom Scheuren, Erica Mongelli, Jacqui Corcoran, and Lane Stone were patient, meticulous, and incredibly generous with their time and expertise as readers. Karen, especially: thank you for your effort and lending me your ear as a fellow writer.
Thank you to Chip Cochran, Dave Green, and Ray Tarasovic for sharing with me their many years of expertise in law enforcement. A special thank you to Chip for the many emails and late nights chewing the fat.
Eric Cohen and Drucilla Brethwaite of Life With Cancer (www.lifewithcancer.org) were incredibly helpful in describing the process of being diagnosed with cancer, the paths to treatment, and the complex navigation required of patients as they battle their disease. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I apologize for any mistakes or exaggerations; all faults rest with me.
Jenny McDowell, Matt McDowell, Bill Way, and Paul Caulfield gave generously of their time to help make sense of the legal processes I pretended to know inside and out.
My editor Alison Dasho (née Janssen) was a huge help ironing the inconsistencies and unrealities I tried to pass off as decent writing. Thank you, Alison; you made the whole much better than the parts.
Lastly, thank you to those suffering with cancer, as well as the victims and survivors of violent crime. In my research, I read many accounts of oncology patients going through diagnosis, treatment, and recovery and of the families struggling to cope with a loss borne of violence. The tremendous courage you display in facing your hardships is humbling and inspirational.
Thank you for reading A Reason to Live.
I hope you've enjoyed what you've read. Please let me know what you think at [email protected], my FaceBook profile, my Amazon Author page, my Goodreads Author page, or Tweet me @CrimeRighter. I also enjoy connecting with readers and writers at my website at matthew-iden.com.
Independent writers can only survive and flourish with the help of readers. If you like what you've read, please consider reviewing A Reason to Live at one of these fine websites:
Amazon
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If crime fiction is your thing, please check out my collection of short stories, one bad twelve (details below). And keep an eye out for the second Marty Singer novel, Blueblood, coming in September 2012. A sample chapter follows.
I also write mystery and horror: check out my fantasy shorts Sword of Kings, Assassin, and Seven Into the Bleak (links below). My literary horror novella, Finding Emma, is available in most digital formats.
Chapter One
My hands are behind my back. Each thumb has been lashed to the other with a short length of zip-tie, the plastic line you use to cinch electrical cords together so you won't trip over them. It's the kind of stuff that gets tighter the more you pull at it and right now the short strips holding my thumbs and pinkies are so tight that the tips of my fingers feel like they're going to burst like hot grapes. It must be bad, since I lost feeling in the rest of my hands hours ago.
Blood is rolling down my hairline, making a half circuit along the side of my face like a scarlet moon before cutting in and dribbling over a cheek and into one swollen eye. The cut the blood comes from is a six inch trench going from the top of my scalp to just north of my forehead. A guy put it there with a two-foot length of rebar wrapped in electrical tape. The tape wasn't there to soften the blow; it was to give him a better grip. The deep, diamond-shaped cross-hatching that gives rebar a better bond with cement is what laid my scalp open, but it was the force of the blow that cracked my skull. I'm nauseous and can smell my own vomit, which is puddled in front of me. That probably means I'm laying on the floor. I can't tell since my good eye is closest to the ground and any time I move my head, I scream.
It doesn't stop at my face. My ribs feel gone, too, half of them snapped like plastic straws. It's hard to breathe, though that may be from the blood running down my throat. The bruises up and down both arms aren't worth mentioning, but my gut is aching and my testicles have ballooned to the size of tennis balls, which is what happens when they've been kicked repeatedly.
The beating, as brutal as it was, wasn't systematic. For what it's worth, this was done in a frenzy; it wasn't an interrogation and it wasn't about payback. Nobody was asking questions or taking time to gloat. They just wanted to hurt. Small consolation, but the guy with the rebar hadn't done anything a hospital couldn't put back together with enough time and health insurance. No one had lopped off a finger or spooned out an eye. It might take weeks or months or years, even, to heal. But as long as I have a pulse, I have a chance.
I was still thinking that when he came back. Quietly, this time, maybe to watch me struggling to take a breath. I didn't hear him at first; blood had pooled in my ear and my pulse was loud. Then a shoe scuffed a wall or a doorframe or a piece of furniture and I turned my head towards the sound instinctively. But a small click, like a gear falling into place, told me my chance was done, and I wanted to yell, to tell them, no, I needed to see my boy and my wife and--
. . .
"You see it?"
"I see it," I said, putting the last of the crime scene photos down. I was happy to get them out of my hands. A year ago, they would've been nothing special for Marty Singer, homicide cop, especially after thirty years on the Washington DC squad, but time had given me some distance from that life and I realized I didn't have quite the same perspective on things now that I did then. "This is bad."
"It is," Sam Bloch said. He was a lieutenant with the MPDC Major Narcotics Branch, the catchall division that did most of the city's drug enforcement. Bloch was a slim, tall man with a pinched face and a small, pencil-thin mustache. With his dark black hair and dark eyes, he could've been Clark Gable's twin, but with a nose so broken that the tip almost touched one cheek, he would've had to have settled for being the stunt double.
"Who was he, again?"
"Danny Garcia," Bloch said. He picked up the photos and slipped them back into a manila envelope, conscious of the people passing our table at the Java Hut. We had a nook in one of the duskier corners of the coffee house, but still, you don't want anyone tossing their biscotti just because they looked over and saw a stack of eight-by-ten glossies of a mutilated body.
"Danny was one of our best undercover guys," Bloch continued. "Hispanic, obviously, so he was huge help with the Latino gangs, but it was more than that. He was good because he fit in anywhere. Fast talker, knew the street, great instincts on when to step it up or back off. He could put together a buy over in Southeast where even the black cops won't go, for Christ's sake, and the next day be out in Hicksville, picking up a John Deere full of weed from two good old boys spitting Skoal between their tooth."
I took a sip of coffee. It started picking a fight with the bile Bloch's pictures had brought forth. "Looks like somebody wasn't buying that night."
Bloch lifted the cover of the folder and looked at the top picture again, then let it fall back shut. "I couldn't believe this when I saw it. We get our share of outrageous shit--probably more than our share--but Danny was good and this kind of…butchery doesn't happen every day. Not anymore. Maybe in a gang war or when people are sending a message about who's boss, but no one was going to mistake Danny for a chavala."
I frowned.
"A rival gang leader," Bloch explained. "Danny was going on fifty. The only gangsters that old are either in maximum lockup or dead. Most of today's honchos are in their twenties."
"Maybe someone just made him." I gestured at the folder. "This was vicious enough to be driven by cop hate."
Bloch shrugged, a short roll of the shoulders. "It's possible. Anything is. But, like I said, he was good at wh
at he did. Too good for me to believe he just happened to slip up."
"When he was on a case, did he pose as a junkie? Or a buyer?"
"A little of both," Bloch said, reaching inside his jacket for a cigarette, then stopped as he saw the No Smoking sign above the door. He settled for picking up a sugar packet and started turning it in his hands, corner-to-corner. "He'd break in as a user, see who was dealing. Then he'd graduate to hand-to-hand deals. It was penny-ante shit, but it gave him an idea on who was willing to play ball. Final stop might be to set up a mid-level buy for a small cut or to get two dealers together, see if they would do business."
"Why such small beans?" I asked. "He was a twenty-year pro."
"For just that reason. If we used Danny once on a big bust, he was burnt. He'd have to sit at a desk for two years before he could go back on the street. Instead, I kept him simmering somewhere in the middle, which worked. We set up three major busts a year without compromising him."
"How'd he like that?"
"Not much," Bloch admitted. "It was blue collar work. No glory, none of that lining up millions on a kitchen table with a dozen AK-47s and getting on the evening news. He wasn't happy about it, but he knew he was doing good work."
I wondered about that. Cops are people, too, and it can be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel if you're asked to turn the crank on the same wheel day-in, day-out. But I kept that to my self. "What was he working on when this happened?"
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