by R.J. Ellory
Duchaunak nodded apologetically.
‘Right then. You never saw the Department Counsellor, am I right?’
‘I saw her.’
McLuhan nodded slowly. ‘Right, you saw her . . . and how many times did you see her Frank?’
Duchaunak hesitated.
‘Frank?’
‘Once,’ Duchaunak said.
‘Right . . . you saw her once. And she scheduled weekly meetings for you that were supposed to continue until further notice.’
‘I saw her, Captain, I saw the woman.’
‘You saw her once, Frank. Once.’
‘You ever seen her?’ Duchaunak asked. ‘The woman is about as useful as a solar-powered torch.’
Faulkner withheld himself from laughing. He turned away, raised his hand to his face and cleared his throat.
McLuhan glared at him.
‘I did go and see her, Captain. I went and told her and she asked me all manner of bullshit questions about whether or not my father hugged me enough when I was a kid. Christ, the thing was like a made-for-TV fucking movie—’
‘It was a requirement Frank, a fucking requirement of your evaluation. It wasn’t a nice fucking idea. It wasn’t a go-and-have-chat-with-the-nice-shrink-lady-when-you-feel-like-it-and-everything’s-going-to-be-fine. It was a condition . . . let me say that again. It was a condition of you staying on the job. The fact that you didn’t do it and you are not already suspended is by the sheer fucking grace of God. That, and the fact that you pair of smashers actually manage to get some halfway-decent results on something useful every once in a while. Now we’re back in here trawling through the same old routine again. Frank Duchaunak and his obsession—’
Duchaunak opened his mouth to speak.
McLuhan raised his hand, extended a finger and wagged it back and forth like a stern teacher. ‘Listen to what I’m saying, Frank. We are back in here talking to you about the same fucking obsession you have with these people. It’s Bernstein and Marcus, Neumann, Freiberg, Charlie Beck . . . and then you have all of their goddamned families back of them. Where’s Raymond Dietz and Albert Reiff? And who’s that other asshole you keep going on about?’
‘Joe Koenig,’ Duchaunak said.
‘Right, Koenig . . . Joe Koenig . . . so where the fuck are these guys this time?’
Duchaunak looked sideways at Faulkner, and then he turned back to McLuhan. ‘They’re around, Captain. They’re always around.’
‘Is that so?’
Duchaunak looked back without expression.
‘And they’re around now? I mean . . . I mean they’re right here in this room now Frank? Are they with you all the time? Do you hear their voices when you go to fucking sleep at night?’
Duchaunak closed his eyes and shook his head. He looked overwhelmed, at the end of some internal road and now uncertain of where he’d believed it would take him.
‘For God’s sake, Frank, Edward Bernstein is in the hospital dying of a gunshot wound. Who knows that his own people didn’t set the thing up to have him out the way—’
‘We know it wasn’t a set-up, Captain. We know that it wasn’t a planned shooting.’
McLuhan nodded. ‘I’ve seen the security footage yes, but it doesn’t change the fact that once again we are walking down the same beaten-to-shit path and there isn’t anything at the end but your fertile and overactive imagination.’
‘But there’s something else now, Captain—’
‘I know there’s something else, Frank . . . there’s two dead something-elses, but that does not, I repeat does not change the fact that you have no standard assignment authority, no backup, no departmental protocol behind you. You are, and not for the first time I might add, flying by the seat of your fucking pants. Jesus, you guys are like Wing and a Prayer Incorporated. I have nightmares about what you pair are doing. I wake up in the early hours of the morning in a cold sweat worrying about what thunderstorm of shit you’re going to bring down on me tomorrow. Can you not let Homicide just do its job with Levin and Hoy? Can you not let Edward Bernstein, who may or may not be the Devil Incarnate and all his unholy tribes in human form, die in fucking peace in St Vincent’s Hospital? And now this thing about Bernstein’s son? Where the fuck in left field of all left fields did that motherfucker come from?’
‘Miami.’
‘Hey! It’s not a fucking joke, Frank! You think I’m joking? I look like I’m joking here?’ McLuhan’s face reddened, his eyes like hot dark stones. ‘Pretty easy to tell when I’m joking, Frank . . . I’m the first one to fucking laugh. You see me laughing? You see me laughing, Frank? No? I didn’t fucking think so—’
‘Captain McLuhan—’
‘No Frank! That’s it! That’s fucking it! Enough is enough! You’re on suspension.’ He turned and looked at Faulkner. ‘You’re reassigned to—’ He stopped mid-sentence. ‘What the fuck am I thinking? Fuck you too! You’re on suspension as well. Frank Duchaunak and Don Faulkner are suspended.’
‘You have to be—’ Duchaunak started.
‘I have to be what Frank? I have to be insane not to have done this a month ago. Out of my office. Let me deal with my two homicides. Let me assign some real homicide detectives to this thing, and you pair can go off and sit in a diner somewhere for a fortnight and feel repentant about all the stress and high blood pressure you have caused, and work out how the fuck Edward Bernstein arranged the assassination of JFK and started the Iraq fucking war from his hospital bed. Christ, you pair are probably responsible for decreasing my lifespan by about five fucking years!’
Duchaunak rose from his chair. His fists were clenched.
Faulkner started up as well. ‘Frank—’
Duchaunak turned, glared at Faulkner. Faulkner didn’t say another word. He kind of hung somewhere between seated and standing and didn’t know where to look.
‘Captain McLuhan, you can’t do this . . . you really cannot do this.’
‘I can do anything the fuck I like. What does it say on my door? It says Captain, right? Captain Michael McLuhan. That means that as far as you guys are concerned I really can do anything the fuck I like. I am suspending you. I am suspending you for real. For a fortnight, perhaps longer. Maybe if I don’t see either of you for two weeks my blood pressure will come down and I will start to believe that you are not off your fucking heads. Then I might reconsider. Taking into account the way this has gone before I will assign you to something else, give you a week, and then begin to wonder what the hell made me think anything would be different.’
Duchaunak’s face was red with anger. A sweat had broken out across his forehead. Don Faulkner had decided to sit down, and he sat there like a man who knew he’d been defeated.
‘Now, do you understand what I have said here? Do we actually understand one another, Frank?’
‘There’s going to be a war,’ Duchaunak said, his voice tense, the words making their way out through gritted teeth. ‘There’s going to be a war . . . going to be a whole lot more dead people lying around the streets of your precinct, and—’
‘Enough, Frank! That is enough! Out of here . . . right now!’ McLuhan rose and started around his desk. His shoulders were hunched forward, his fists clenched; looked like a Chicago bareknuckle fighter who’d taken fifty on the side to break bones.
Faulkner was up and at the door before McLuhan had reached Duchaunak. Duchaunak hesitated, and then he too took three or four steps backward and stopped in front of Faulkner.
‘Go now, Frank, before I really lose my temper. Two weeks, both of you. Come back after the New Year. Come back and see whether I haven’t died from a coronary, and then we will talk about your careers in the New York police department, okay?’
Duchaunak opened his mouth to speak.
‘Think, Frank. Think about what you’re going to say before you say it.’
Duchaunak looked over his shoulder at Faulkner. Faulkner shook his head, reached back and opened the door.
‘Nothing is a good thing to s
ay right now,’ McLuhan said. ‘Go do something else until after Christmas . . . just go do something else, Frank, anything but chasing Edward Bernstein. The guy is a ghost, a fucking spectre . . . he doesn’t even exist any more.’
Duchaunak closed his eyes for a second, lowered his head, and then he turned as Faulkner held open the door.
Duchaunak waited until Faulkner had quietly closed the door, and then he started down the corridor.
‘Frank?’
Duchaunak didn’t reply.
‘Frank, wait up for God’s sake.’
Duchaunak stopped walking and waited until Faulkner caught him up.
‘Frank—’
‘Leave me be, Don. Leave me be for a day or two. Go home. Go and see whoever you go and see when you’re not working. Leave me alone for a little while. I’ll call you, okay? I’ll call you and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.’
‘We’re not going to do anything, Frank.’
Duchaunak raised his hand and Faulkner fell silent. Duchaunak smiled as best he could, an expression of philosophic resignation and bone-deep fatigue. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said quietly. ‘Maybe the next day . . . I’ll call you.’
Faulkner knew better than to argue. He raised his hand and gripped Duchaunak’s shoulder for a moment, and then he started to walk away.
Duchaunak watched him go. He hesitated for a moment, turned and looked back towards McLuhan’s door, wondered for a moment if he should attempt to handle the man by himself. He inhaled deeply, exhaled, and then seemed to accept the fact that nothing further would be achieved today.
He buried his hands in his pockets. He walked slowly, head down, and made his way to the end of the corridor. He took the stairs. Never took the elevator. Frank Duchaunak didn’t do elevators; never had and never would.
THIRTY-SIX
‘Cleaning things up, yes . . . it’s always necessary when things are changing. Like the shift between seasons. Things have to die to make room for things that need to grow.’
Freiberg rose from where he was seated at the dining table and walked to the window. He paused in silence, his back to the room, and when he turned the smoke from his cigarette and the backlight seemed to make his face disappear into nothing. Cathy Hollander looked down at the remnants of her lunch. Her appetite had not been good. She’d made her excuses so as not to offend Eleanor Freiberg, that she’d been a little off-color all morning, and Eleanor had smiled and accepted her apology gracefully. Eleanor always smiled, always saw the very best in everything. Eleanor Freiberg was married to one of the most vicious and uncompromising gangsters in New York, and yet the face she wore for the world you would have believed her married to a priest. Cathy believed Eleanor was quietly drowning beneath a tidal wave of valium and gin. How else could she have survived?
‘So what we do is what we do, and such things are not pleasant,’ Freiberg went on. ‘They are a necessity my dear, always a necessity. If Marcus and his people want to prune their own trees then that is their business, right?’
Cathy smiled. She took a cigarette from her purse and lit it.
‘And your plans?’ Freiberg asked.
‘I’m a New Yorker, Walt, always have been, always will be. I go where the money goes, know what I mean?’
Freiberg stepped towards her and sat down. ‘Tell me something,’ he said quietly. He stubbed out his cigarette, leaned back and crossed his legs. ‘I have known Ben Marcus for many, many years. Despite the countless conversations I have had with the man, good and bad, I could not say that I truly understand him. You were with him for quite some time—’
‘Hardly,’ Cathy said. ‘A few months, perhaps three or four.’
‘Even so, a few months being around him, involved in things that weren’t official business, you must have come to some sort of conclusion about him.’
‘I wouldn’t say I was around him, Walt . . . I spent most of my time in hotels. You know the life people like me live as well as anyone.’
Freiberg smiled understandingly. ‘He hurt you, didn’t he?’
‘Hurt me? I think he hurts everyone who has anything to do with him eventually.’
‘You tried to leave?’
Cathy looked away towards the window, caught in a wave of oppressive claustrophobia. She gripped the arms of the chair, felt her knuckles whiten. ‘A hundred times, Walt, a hundred fucking times.’
‘How did you end up with him?’
Cathy laughed nervously. ‘Same way everyone else ends up with him.’
‘You owed him money.’
She nodded. ‘Right.’
‘A lot?’
‘Enough.’
‘More than ten?’
‘Twenty-eight grand, Walt. I owed him twenty-eight grand and change.’
‘Gambling?’
‘Yes.’
Freiberg sighed and shook his head. ‘And he had you work off the debt?’
‘Yeah . . . he had me work off the debt.’
‘Until this thing with Edward.’
Cathy was silent for a time. She looked down at her hands, now wrestling with each other in her lap, and then she looked directly at Freiberg. Her eyes were cold, hard, unflinching. ‘When the thing happened with Edward, when Edward took me away from Ben Marcus it saved my life.’
Freiberg raised his eyebrows. ‘Marcus was going to kill you?’
‘No Walt, he wasn’t going to kill me, but I was a day or two away from killing him, and we all know how that would have ended.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I didn’t plan anything Walt. I can’t say that I ever planned anything in my life. I was way out there though, out wherever the edge of your sanity is, and I had already given myself a choice. I was going to make a run for it, and if he came after me, because it would have been Ben Marcus who came after me personally, I vowed I would kill him. I might have done it, but Sol Neumann, Victor Klein, Ray Dietz – any of those guys who were close to him – would have hunted me to the ends of the earth and killed me right back. It was do or die for me Walt, do or fucking die.’
Freiberg shook his head and exhaled deeply. ‘Just in the nick of time, eh?’
‘Too right.’
‘And things were okay with Edward?’
Cathy smiled. ‘Edward is a gentleman, Walt, you know that better than anyone. The guy’s a saint compared to Ben Marcus. Edward never laid a hand on me. Edward treated me like a human being—’ Cathy Hollander felt her words catch in her chest. ‘Jesus, Walt, why the hell does this shit have to happen to the people who don’t deserve it?’
‘Way of the world sweetheart, way of the world.’
‘He’s going to be alright, isn’t he?’
Freiberg looked at her hard. ‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘I don’t think so. You want my gut feeling on this, I think his time is done.’
Cathy felt tears welling in her eyes. She reached for her purse, withdrew a tissue and held it to her face.
Freiberg leaned forward, closed his hand over hers. ‘You have to let this go,’ he said quietly. ‘He and I . . . Edward and I . . . have been family for as many years as I can recall, and I have to let him go too. This is the way these things work out, and if you knew Edward as well as I do, you would understand that going out like this is what he’d want. Wasting away in some godawful nursing home, sucking his lunch through a straw and pissing in a plastic bag is the last thing in the world he’d want. You have to look out for yourself, and you have to look forward, right? That’s what Edward would want.’
Cathy nodded.
‘You should get to know his son. John Harper seems like a good man.’
Cathy laughed. ‘Harper? Jesus, Walt, the guy’s right off the farm.’
‘You listen to me, Cathy Hollander, you’ve got to look out for yourself. You have to make a decision now because things are going to get tough and bloody for a while. It’s going to end at some point. The control of the city is going to change, and then you’re going to have to make a choice
between staying with me or making something of your own. You don’t owe Marcus any more, and you sure as hell don’t owe me anything. You’re not going to come out of this empty-handed. Edward would have taken care of you, and it’s my responsibility to do what he would have wanted. And this guy, John Harper, he’s a smart guy. He wrote a fucking book for Christ’s sake. You write a book then you can’t be a retard, right?’ Freiberg laughed, squeezed Cathy’s hand reassuringly. ‘Maybe you should make a little time to get to know him. He’s got nothing here once Edward’s gone. His aunt, she’s a cold one. John never saw eye-to-eye with her. He isn’t going to stay in New York because of her. He’s going to go right back to Miami, right back to Florida where the sun shines every fucking day, where no-one has anything on him or you. It’s worth considering, Cathy, it’s worth looking at the possibility of going somewhere where no-one knows your name or your face. Stay here in New York and you’ll always be remembered as Ben Marcus’s girl, even Edward’s. You’re known as the girl who paid a debt for Ben Marcus, and that, believe me, is not the way you want to be known no matter who’s running the show after we’re gone.’
‘You’re really going to pack up the circus and go, aren’t you?’
Freiberg smiled. ‘I’m hitting the late years. This used to be a city where you could get something done, make some serious money. Everything has changed. The seventies, they were our heyday, that’s when we were kids. The eighties there was all the money that came in with the business people and the cocaine. You should’ve seen the parties these people had, the money they threw away.’ Freiberg smiled and shook his head. ‘If we’d been regular people with regular jobs we’d be looking at Florida retirement brochures. Truth is, if Edward dies there isn’t going to be anything here. I’m not a king Cathy, never have been and never will be. That’s something that Edward could do, but me? I don’t think so. I’ll be on my way once everything’s settled with Marcus. But you? You’re on your own. That means there’s room for someone else. I know that no two people are alike, and just because you’re close to Edward doesn’t mean that his son would be anything similar, but he seems like a good man, and he could take you away from this and help you make something better. This is not a life you want to die for, Cathy. This is the sort of life you live for as long as it isn’t dangerous, and the moment it gets truly dangerous you take the best ticket out.’
