****
After our hot little quickie, Diane and I sat in a Greek place called “Kypreos” down the street from her apartment. We both ordered lamb with green beans, a Greek salad and pita bread. She sipped on a glass of white wine while I stuck to Diet Coke.
I would have preferred a beer but I needed full control of my senses. One or two wouldn’t knock me on my ass, it was just a principle I’d long lived by; no alcohol when there might be shooting.
“Now how am I going to get you drunk and take advantage of you?” she asked.
“I’m sure you’ll manage.”
She smiled and crossed her legs. Good thing she slipped on some silk panties before we left her place or the other customers might have gotten a free show.
“So how goes the campaign?” I asked.
“I thought you didn’t care?”
“I care about your job, just not your boss.”
“It could be better; we lost a few points in the most recent poll.”
“That’s terrible. Danny should get out there and preach more family values, less expense money for hookers.”
A few people in the restaurant turned and looked at us when I said “hookers.”
“Ronan, stop,” Diane pleaded.
“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Must have been the Diet Coke; it makes me absolutely silly.”
She grabbed my glass and playfully pulled it away.
“You’re cut off, pal.
“I thought you said you wanted to seduce me. Make up your mind.”
“Always the clown.”
“That’s why you like me so much.”
A strange look came over her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shook her head and looked at her watch. “Nothing, I just thought of something I needed to do for work. Can you excuse me?”
“Sure.”
She stood up and went to the ladies room. There was definitely something bothering her and I was pretty sure I knew what it was.
After dinner, we made the short walk back to her apartment. It was again unseasonably warm and there were a lot of people out for a Wednesday night. She was very quiet the whole way, just holding my hand.
At her door, she pulled me by the lapels and kissed me hard.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to forget your meeting and stay with me,” she said.
“This is important.”
“You’re running around risking your life for a dead girl who you barely knew. Can’t I be important?”
“Yes, you can but I have to do this, Diane. I’m already way too deep to just let it go now because there are other people relying on me.”
She looked in my eyes and I could tell she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to word it. I kissed her quick and walked away as she stood in front of the door, watching me go. The next time I saw her I hoped to be done with this mess and free to chart a new course in my life. Either way, things were going to be different between us.
NINETEEN
I called both Garcia and Tony to make sure they were in position. Neither had seen anything to indicate our targets were in the area. Shea and surprisingly Morley plus a few other guys from LPD were standing by to assist in the event things got out of control. I secretly hoped to finally get to see the legendary Shea in action.
I drove down Market Street and made the left onto Bridge Street, parking across from Kerouac Park in the near-empty Textile Museum lot. I took off my jacket and shirt and put on my body armor, covering it with a black T-shirt and then my jacket. I wanted to be ready, so I undid the strap on my holster to give me a fraction of a second faster draw-time. I’d take any available advantage I could get.
I crossed the street and sat on a bench in the park next to the pillars. It was a hell of a lot warmer than the last time I was here with Max. Beads of sweat started to form on my back and under my arms. I bet Batman never sweated like this under his costume. The area was relatively calm this time of night with a few cars passing by in each direction but nothing close to the daytime traffic.
My watch said it was nine-fifty-nine. The twenty seconds it took to change to ten seemed like hours as my heartbeat increased and my adrenalin began to flow. It was always like this for me leading up to an operation though few people had ever been able to detect any difference in me outwardly. The minutes slowly ticked away but there was no sign of Garcia. He definitely didn’t strike me as a guy who’d be late especially for something this important.
I was reaching for my cell phone when someone entered the park too tall to be Garcia. At first in the darkness I couldn’t make out who it was but as he got closer, it was Morley. He took a long drag on a cigarette and flicked it on the ground.
“Get out of here,” I growled. “You’re going to screw this all up.”
Truer words were never spoken. He pulled his department issued .40 caliber Beretta handgun and pointed it at my chest.
“What, nothing smart to say?” he asked.
“You’re ugly and your breath smells like a dead animal.”
He chuckled. “I gotta give you credit, Ronan. You’ve managed to survive a lot longer than I thought you would. I mean, who the fuck would have thought a little shit like you would take out a guy the size of Oisen Donohue?”
“Shea said he thought he had guys on Duffy’s payroll. I’ll bet he never imagined it could be the superintendent’s brother in law.”
“Duffy Fitzpatrick? Fuck him. You think too small.”
“LaValle?”
“Close enough.”
“So you killed Karen?”
He nodded. “The bitch put up a bit of a struggle but after working all night and fucking you in the back of her car, she didn’t have much fight left in her.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“How comfortable you think living on a government pension was going to be? For all the bullshit I’ve put up with over the years in this city, I deserve far more than that.”
“I guess that explains how you missed the paint transfer.”
“Yeah, can you believe Garcia went back and found it?”
“You didn’t kill him too, did you?”
“No, but he’ll have a hell of a headache tomorrow. Never even saw me coming. I’m not quite as incompetent as you thought.”
“What’s Diane Dunn’s role in all of this?” I asked, all the while looking for an opportunity to do something before he shot me. Even though I had my vest on, at this range I seriously doubted that it would do much good. My hope was if I could keep him talking, Tony might wonder what was taking so long and wander over to see if there was a problem.
“She came to me and said the blonde was a security problem. I threatened her but it didn’t work because she claimed her boyfriend would protect her. I assume she meant you.”
“Yeah,” I replied somberly.
“Didn’t do such a good job did you, tough guy?”
“Karen never told me there was a problem. So why did you have to kill her?”
“She was too big a liability to LaValle’s campaign and Diane offered me a nice sum of cash to take her out. I tried to make it look like just another junky who slipped into the river and drowned but you wouldn’t keep your frigging nose out of it.”
“And now you’ll just kill me too.”
“Of course. It’s too bad because Diane really likes you.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You should be, the lady is a real piece of ass. I might even try to get some of that for myself.”
“Dream on, pal.”
“She was hoping you’d back off, but I told her it was much too late. Like your girlfriend, you’ve become too great a liability.”
The sweat started to drip from my brow and I wiped it with my forehead.
“Well, Ronan, I’d love to sit here and watch you sweat it out a bit longer, but I’ve got better things to do tonight.”
He grinned and extended his arm, pointing the gun right at
my forehead. His finger slowly started to pull back on the trigger when from across the street there was a shotgun blast that echoed through the park. A body fell from the two-story brick building adjacent to the park and crashed onto the street in a heap.
That was all the distraction I needed. Morley turned to look and I knocked the gun out of his hand sending it skittering across the brick walkway. He lunged at me with a punch but I landed a jab to his chin, knocking him backwards.
As I squared off to finish Morley, I heard screeching tires and the sound of a speeding car. From around the corner, the black Charger appeared. Red leaned out the passenger window and fired a volley from a Mac-10 pistol in our direction. I got blown back and slammed hard into a pillar; falling to the ground with a sharp pain in my chest. I touched my hand to the point of impact and felt no blood. My vest had absorbed the impact though it still hurt like hell. I crawled behind the pillar for cover and drew my .45, peeking out to look for Red and Goatee.
Morley lay on the ground in a pool of blood with a shocked look on his face, his dead gray eyes staring up at the stars. The Charger’s doors slammed shut and my mind raced. Where the hell was Tony? Red and Goatee moved toward me, both sporting Mac-10s. They apparently thought I was down for good and didn’t even bother to move up tactically. The renegade cops just walked confidently out in the open like this was a gunfight from an old western film.
“I’m pretty sure I hit him,” I heard Red say.
“I don’t see him. Come out, come out where ever you are,” Goatee taunted.
I took a few deep breaths so I could make a run for it but they were getting too close. There was no way I could outrun the spray from their automatic weapons, leaving me one option. I leaned forward from behind the pillar and squeezed off a few shots, catching them off guard.
Both began to fire wildly but I had good cover just as planned. Their rounds ricocheted all around me, a few whizzing right by my head but none hitting the mark. At that moment, I was the biggest Kerouac fan on the planet; Jack and the architect who designed the park.
The gunfire stopped and there was a brief second of silence and things again seemed to move in slow motion. It was so quiet I could hear the rushing of water from the nearby river. To my great relief, the silence was interrupted by the booming of a shotgun.
I looked back around the corner of the pillar and saw Tony running and shooting at Red and Goatee. Not a lot of guys I knew had the strength to accurately fire a shotgun while in a full sprint. While their attention was fixed on him, I stood up and blew off a few more rounds, catching them in a crossfire. Goatee brought his Mac-10 up but took a blast from the shotgun square in the chest before he could get another shot off. His body reeled backwards from the force of the shot into the side of their car and he lay there dying.
I moved out from my cover and charged Red, knocking the gun out of his hand. He turned and ran toward the bridge that spanned the river and I took chase. Glancing behind me, I saw Tony huffing and puffing to a stop. I was on my own for a moment.
Red was not a runner and even though my chest ached from the shot I took, I caught him just as he was almost off the bridge and out to the VFW Highway. I slammed him into a steel support beam and he landed an ineffective punch to my stomach. I countered with one to his jaw that dazed him.
He grabbed my throat and tried to choke me but I smashed him in the face with an elbow breaking his grip. Blood poured from his nose and his head hit the steel beam for a second time yet he continued to fight on. He missed kneeing me in the groin when I shifted my hips out of the way but he managed to pull me around and tried to push me over the bridge guardrail.
“You’re fucking dead, you asshole,” he screamed. “Do you hear me? Fucking dead!
I wanted to make some wise ass quip, but this was a life or death struggle and all I could think of was survival. I grabbed him and we hit the rail hard and it gave way. With all the strength I could muster, I flipped him over and he fell headfirst toward the cold rushing waters, pulling me along for the ride.
We hung from the bridge, saved only when I grabbed onto a support beam. Tony arrived and held my arm preventing me from falling. Red dangled below me, perilously clutching my free hand. There was a burning sensation in my shoulder where the stitches were and the sting in my chest intensified. Warm blood started to drip down my arm and the pain became excruciating.
“Hold on, Ronan,” Tony yelled.
Tony is as strong as the Hulk, and with him clamped onto me I wouldn’t fall. Red wasn’t so certain of his fate.
“Don’t let me go, man,” he pleaded.
“Tell me who sent you.”
We stared into each other’s eyes and I could tell he was trying to decide which fate would be better for his long term health; giving up Duffy or falling to the rocks below.
“Who sent you?”
“Come on, man, let me up!”
“I don’t think I can hold on much longer,” I said.
“Jesus, come on, man. Just let me up,” he screamed.
“I will after you tell me who sent you.”
I was losing my grip, but if he didn’t talk now, I’d never get him to say it, though it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out the answer. I just wanted to hear him speak the words.
“It was Duffy, Duffy Fitzpatrick. He cut a deal with some broad to have you killed.”
“Give me her name?”
“Fuck, I don’t really know. Please, I don’t want to die.”
“Her name?” I demanded.
“He doesn’t know, Ronan,” Tony barked. “Just drop his ass before I lose you both. When Duffy gets word he ratted him out, he’s dead anyway.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “But I’m not going to be the one to do it.”
Red looked up at Tony and seemingly realized that my cousin was right about his future. Even if Duffy didn’t manage to whack him, a cop gone bad wouldn’t survive long behind bars. As Tony struggled to pull us up, Red began to slowly shake his head.
“No way, man…no way,” he kept repeating. “I’m going out on my terms.”
With that he let go of my hand and dropped like an anvil, landing with a thud on the shallow rocky waters below. His body stretched across the rocks contorted in a position no living human body could get into.
Like my guardian angel though, Tony didn’t fail me and prevented me from joining Red in his eternal reward. He pulled me to safety and laid me down on the pavement. My arm felt like it had almost been severed from my shoulder and I reached across and felt my shirt sleeve drenched with blood. I tried to sit up but my body didn’t respond to my commands and everything started to get blurry. I felt like I was going into shock.
“Just take it easy, paisan. Help is on the way,” Tony assured me.
I could hear the sirens approaching and seconds later, police blues lit up the night signaling Shea’s arrival. He kneeled down next to me; a mix of concern and anger across his face.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Just what in the fuck happened here?”
“I’d love to explain it all to you, Gary but I don’t think I can right…,” I mumbled, unable to finish the sentence before I blacked out.
****
I awoke again in the emergency room and my first thought was the dimwitted hope they had some kind of frequent patient discount because I must have certainly been eligible by now.
I lay nude on an exam table covered with a sheet. There was a nasty black and blue bruise on my chest from the round that hit me. The damage was minimal thanks to my vest. Hanging from the bridge with Red had popped the stitches in my left shoulder and reopened the wound which was covered with a blood-soaked bandage. I sat up but felt a bit woozy most likely from the loss of blood.
Even though I’d nailed the guys that killed Karen and Chief Fontini, my poor-choice-in-women streak continued on which made me feel worse than my physical injuries.
The curtain opened and Dr. Sadolovaki stood looking at me, her arms crossed.
“This is getting ridiculous,” she said. “If you just wanted my name, I would have given it to you.”
“The elephants are out of control again.”
“Uh huh.”
“You seem amused,” I said.
“I just think it’s funny that you keep ending up in the ER and I’m always the one on duty.”
“I plan it that way.”
“Sure. So what happened this time?”
“It’s over this time,” I explained. “At least I think it is.”
“Good, because I’m getting tired of stitching you up. I assume you’re going to be a big tough guy and not go with anything to numb the pain,” she said.
“I think this time I am going to do the smart thing,” I replied. “In fact, I hope to start doing the smart thing in general.”
“We all have to start sometime,” she quipped with a slight smile.
Thirty minutes later, I was all stitched back up and she covered it with a clean bandage.
“Since you’ve decided to drop the macho veneer and do the right thing with the stitches, I want you to spend the night here,” she said.
“You think I’m in that bad a shape?”
“You’ve been in here with some pretty serious injuries three times in the past month and lost a lot of blood.”
“It was the past six weeks,” I corrected.
“That’s still ridiculous. I know pro athletes who don’t get hurt as much as you do.”
“I’m far too weak to argue,” I sighed.
“Good. When you’re released, I want you to make sure you get plenty of rest and don’t do anything to rip those stitches out again,” she ordered. “You need to let your body heal.”
“I may not follow your directions after I get out of here,” I said. “I should probably be supervised.”
“I can refer you to a number of qualified home nursing agencies.”
“I was thinking maybe a doctor.”
“I don’t do house calls.”
“Too bad, because I have a really interesting comic book collection.”
This sparked her interest and she raised an eyebrow. “What’s your best one?”
Lloyd Corricelli - Ronan Marino 01 - Two Redheads & a Dead Blonde Page 24
