"I'm always right," Banadando said. "I can't take you back to your car. I'll drop you at Center Moriches, you can take a cab back."
Levine made that day's pick-ups with no trouble, and that evening, as rain tapped hesitantly at the windows, the four policemen who knew about Banadando —being Levine and Jack Crawley and Lieutenant Barker and Inspector Santangelo —met in the lieutenant's office at the precinct to ^ decide what to do next.
Jack Crawley, a big beefy man with heavy shoulders and hands and a generally dissatisfied look, had no doubt what he wanted to do next: "Bring in everybody," he said. "Inspector, you bring in your whole Organized Crime Unit, we bring in plainclothes anrf uniformed people from the precinct, and we surround that mother. I don't want Abe to spend any more time in the middle of some other clown's argument."
"I’m already in, Jack," Levine said. "We're on the verge of getting some very useful information. I think Banadando actually is as smart as he thinks he is, and that hell manage to elude Polito for the next two days. It’s only until Wednesday, after all. The minute I step off that boat on Wednesday you can phone Inspector Santangelo at Organized Crime, tell him Fm out of the way, and send in the entire police department if you want."
"He'll be long gone by then," Crawley said, and Lieutenant Barker said, "I tend to agree with Jack."
"Fm sorry," said Levine, "but I don't. In the first place, he won't be long gone. I believe he actuadly will make it around the island tonight, but it won't be zn easy trip. Those litde boats always feel like they're going fast, but they're not. What's the top speed of a boat like that, on choppy open water? Twenty miles an hour, maybe a little more? And they gobble up gasoline, hell have to stop once or twice at marinas. This rain will slow him down. Traveling as fast as he can, on a small boat pounding up and down over every wave, hell be lucky if it only takes him seven or eight hours to get around to where he's supposed to meet me tomorrow."
Lieutenant Barker said, "Meaning what, Abe? How does that connect?"
"Meaning," Levine said, "he can't disappear from us all that easily."
Santangelo said, "That's not such good news, Abe. If we could find Banadando just like that, why can't'Polito?"
Levine shrugged. "Maybe he can, I hope not. But we have the entire law enforcement apparatus behind us, to help, and Polito doesn't. We can bring in the Coast Guard, Army helicopters, anything we need."
Smiling, Santangelo said, "Not necessarily at the snap of our fingers."
"No, but it can be done. Polito can't begin to match our manpower or our authority."
Crawley said, "Never mind all of that after-the-event stuff,
Abe. What it comes down to is, Polito's people got to that pier today within an hour o(you getting there. What if they'd been an hour earher?"
"A lot of different things could have happened," Levine said.
"Some of them nasty," Crawley told him.
Santangelo said, "The decision has been Abe's from the beginning, and it still is. Abe, I'll go along with whatever you decide. But I have to say, there's a lot in what your partner says."
"I'll stay the course," Levine told him.
Santangelo said, "There's something else to consider. If something goes wrong, if Banadando gets killed or slips through our fingers, we could all be in trouble for not reporting the situation right away."
Levine spread his hands. "If you're worried about that, you do rank me after all, you could take the decision out of my hands."
"No, I don't want to," Santangelo said. "I think we're handling it right, but I want you and Fred and Officer Crawley to know there could be trouble for all of us down the line. Within the Department."
Lieutenant Barker said, "Let's count that out of the decision-making."
"Fine with me," Santangelo said.
The Long Island Expressway ended just short of Riverhead, seventy-five miles from Manhattan but still another forty-five miles from the end of the island at Montauk Point. The last dozen miles the traffic had thinned out so much that on the long straightaways Levine could see in the rearview mirror Jack Crawley's car, lagging way back. The rain had stopped sometime during the night but the sky was still cloud-covered and the air was cooler and still damp. In mid-morning, the sparse trafl&c here at the eastern end of the Expressway was mostly delivery vans and a few private cars containing shoppers, the latter mainly headed west toward the population centers.
The land out here seemed to imitate the wave-formations of the surrounding sea; long gradual rolls of scrub over which the highway moved in easy gradients, long sweeps steadily upward followed by long gradual declines. It was on the upslopes that Levine would catch glimpses of Jack Crawley's dark-green Pontiac far behind, and on the downslopes that he was increasingly alone.
At the Nugent Drive exit, two miles before the end of the highway, a car was entering the road, a black Chevrolet; Levine pulled accommodatingly into the left lane, passed the car, saw it recede in his mirror, and a moment later was over the next rise. Signs announced the end of the road.
The Chevy reappeared over the crest behind him so abruptly, moving so fast, that Levine had hardly time to register its presence in his mirror before it was shooting past him on the right and there were flat cracking sounds like someone breaking tree branches, and the wheel wrenched itself out of Levine's hands.
He'd been doing just over sixty. The Chevy was already far away in front, and Levine's car was slewing around toward the right shoulder, the wheel still spinning rightward. Levine grabbed it, fighting to pull it back to the left, his right foot tapping and tapping the brakes. Blow-out, he thought, but at the same time his mind was over-riding that normal thought, was telling him. No! They shot it out! They shot the tire!
Banadando! They found him, they're going after him! They cut me out of the play!
He was recapturing control, of his emotions and his thoughts and the car, when its right tires hit the gravel and dirt beside the road and tried t9 yank the steering wheel out of his hands again. He hung on, his foot tapping and tapping, pressing down harder sis they slowed, daring to assert more and more control until at last, in a swirl of tan dust of its own creation, the car jolted to a stop, skewed slightly at an angle toward the highway, seeming to sag in exhaustion on its springs.
Levine opened his mouth wide to breath, but the constriction was farther back, deep in his throat. He leaned forward, resting his forehead on the top of the steering wheel, feeling its bottom press hard into his stomach. His trembling hand went up to cup his left ear, the position in which, he had learned, he could best hear his heart.
Beat, beat beat —
Skip.
Beat, beat, beat —
Skip.
Beat, beat, beat, beat —
Skip.
Beat, beat. . .
All right. Straightening, Levine took a deep breath, finding his throat more open, the act of breathing less painful. That had been a scary one.
Generally, the skips came every eighth beat, but excitement or exercise or terror could shorten the spaces. Three was about the closest it had ever come, and this near-accident had matched that record.
Accident? This was no accident. His entire body still slightly trembling, Levine struggled out of the car, walked around it, and saw that both right-side tires were flat. They showed garish big ragged holes in their sides. A sharpshooter, worth the money Polito would be paying him.
Polito. Banadando. Feeling sudden urgency, Levine looked up the empty roadway toward the top of the slope he*d just come down. Crawley should have appeared by now, he wasn't that far back.
They've taken him out, too.
Jesus, what's happened to Crawley? Levine had actually trotted a few paces toward the distant crest when over it came a rattly white delivery van, and he remembered his other urgency instead: Banadando. In going for Levine's tires, Polito's men had made it clear they weren't interested in killing police today, so they'd undoubtedly taken out Jack Crawley the same way. The man in real trouble
was Banadando.
Pulling his shield out of his jacket pocket, waving it in the air, Levine flagged the approaching van to a halt. A big boxy contraption advertising a brand of potato chip on its side, it was driven by a skinny bearded young man who stood up to drive. He was frowning at Levine with a kind of hopeful curiosity, as though here might be that which would rescue him from terminal boredom.
It was. The tall door on the right side of the van was hooked open. Climbing up into the tall vehicle, still showing the shield, Levine said, "Police. I'm commandeering this truck."
"This truck?" The young man grinned, shaking his head. "You got to be kidding."
"Drive," Levine told him. "As fast as this thing will go." To encourage the young man, he added, "We're trying to stop a murder."
"You're on, pal!"
But no matter how enthusiastic the young man might be, the van's top si>eed turned out to be just about fifty-two. Levine kept leaning his head out the open doorway, looking back, hoping to see Jack Crawley after all, but it never happened.
The interior of the van was piled high with outsize cardboard cartons, presumably containing potato chips. Levine leaned against the flat top of the dashboard under the high windshield and wrote a note on a sheet of paper torn from his memo pad:
"NYPD Detective Abraham Levine, 43 Precinct. Partner Jack Crawley in apparent accident on LIE. Underworld informant under attack. Follow caller to site."
After the highway ended, the young man followed Levine's instructions along Old Country Road and Main Road and Church Lane and Sound Avenue. "It'll be a dirt road," Levine said. "On your left."
When they finally found it, the young man was going to swing to the left and drive down that road but Levine stopped him. Handing over the note, he said, "Go to the nearest phone, call the Suffolk County police, read this to them, tell them where I am."
"You might want me along," the young man said. "Maybe you could use some help."
"Bring me help," Levine told him. Stepping down to the shoulder of the road, he slapped the tinny side of the van as though it were a horse, calling to the driver, "Go on, now. Hurry!"
"Right!"
The van lumbered away, motor roaring as the young man tried to accelerate too rapidly up through the gears, and Levine trotted across the road and started down the dirt road, seeing the fresh scars and streaks of a car's having recently passed this way.
First he saw the water through the thin-leaved birch trees; Long Island Sound, separating this long tongue of land from Connecticut. Then he saw the automobile, a small fast low-to-the-ground Mercedes-Benz sports car painted dark blue. The black Chevy was nowhere in sight; Polito apparently employed specialists.
There was only the one car, and it contained seating for only two. Levine unlimbered his .38 S&W Police Special from its holster on his right hip and moved forward, stepping cautiously on the weedy leaf-covered ground. Yellow and orange leaves fluttered down, sometimes singly or when the breeze lifted they dropped in platoons, infiltrating their way to the ground.
Beyond the Mercedes muddy ground sloped down to an old wooden dock. Tied beside it, very close to shore, was the Bobby's Dream. Revolver in hand, eyes on the boat, Levine approached and, as he passed the Mercedes, a big-shouldered man in dark topcoat and hat came up out of the boat onto the dock, his arms full of boxes and packages, a couple of which Levine recognized; things he had brought to Banadando himself. He stopped, arm out, revolver aimed, and quietly said, "Just keep coming this way."
The man stopped, staringat Levine, his expression one of total amazement. Then, in a blindingly swift move, he flung the boxes away and his right hand stabbed within his topcoat.
Levine did not want to kill, but he did want to stop the man. He fired, aiming high on the man's torso on the right side, wanting to knock him down, knock him out of play, but still leave the breath of life in him. But the man was ducking, bobbing, just as Levine fired; when he jolted back, his own pistol flying out of his clothes and arcing away to fall into the water, Levine had no idea where he'd been hit. He went down hard, the sound a solid thud on the wooden boards of the dock, and he didn't move.
A sudden burst of pistol fire flared from the boat and Levine flung himself backward, putting the low bulk of the Mercedes between himself and the gunman. The firing stopped, and Levine sat on the leafy ground, revolver in his right hand, left hand pressed to his chest, mouth stretched wide. The constriction. . .
Hand cupped to ear. He counted beats, and after the fourth came the skip. Not too bad, not so bad as a little while ago in the car.
To his right, where he was sitting, were the hood and bumper and left front tire of the Mercedes, and out at an angle beyond them were the dock and the boat and the unmoving man Levine had shot. To his left, pressing against his arm, was the narrow graceful trunk of a birch tree. Levine sagged briefly against the tree, then pulled himself up onto his knees and looked cautiously over the hood.
Immediately the pistol cracked over there, and a fluttering of branches took place somewhere behind Levine, who ducked back down. When nothing else happened, he called, "Banadando!"
"He don't feel like talking!" yelled a voice.
"Send him out here!"
"He don't feel like walking either!"
So he was dead already, which would give the man on the boat nothing to lose by holding out. Still, Levine called, "Come out of there with your hands up!"
"I'll tell him when he comes in!"
"You won't get away!"
"Yeah? Where's your army?"
"On its way," Levine called, but the constriction dosed his throat again, chopping off the last word. Get here soon, he prayed.
The man on the boat swore loudly and fired twice in Irvine's direction. Headlight glass shattered, and Levine couldn't help flinching away, his entire body clenching at each shot. "I'm comin' right through you!" yelled the voice.
"Come right ahead," Levine yelled. But he didn't yell it, he hoarsely coughed it. The tightness in his throat was making his head ache, was putting metal bands around his head just above his eyes. He couldn't pziss out, he had to hold this fellow here. Bracing himself between the Mercedes and the tree trunk, he extended his arm forward onto the hood, where the revolver would be visible to the man in the boat. Hold him there. Hold him, no matter what.
Another shot pinged off the car's body; merely frustration and rage, but it made Levine wince. His free hand went to his ear, he sat looking at a leaf that had fallen into his lap.
Beat, beat, beat —
Skip.
Beat, beat
Skip.
Beat, beat
Skip.
Beat —
The Suffolk County cops were all over the dock, the boat, the foreshore. Boxes of Banadando's evidence were being carried to the cars. The gunman from the boat had already been taken away in handcuffs, and now they were waiting for the ambulance and the hearse.
Crawley stood with the Medical Examiner, who straightened and said, "He'd been dead at least a quarter hour when you got here."
"Yeah, I thought. And this one?"
They left Abe Levine's body and walked over to the wounded man on the dock, still unconscious but wrapped now in blankets from the police cars. "He'll live," the M.E. said.
"The wrong ones die," Crawley said.
"Everybody dies," the M.E. said. "It's a thing I've noticed."
Crawley turned and looked back at his partner. Abe was braced between the car and the tree, arm out straight, revolver just visible to the boat. He had died that way, his heart stopping forever but his body not moving. Sirens sounded, approaching.
"How do you like that," Crawley said. "He was dead, and he finished the job anyway. His corpse held that punk covered until we could get here."
"Maybe they'll give him a medal," the M.E. said, and grinned, showing uneven teeth. "A posthumous medal. The first legit posthumous medal ever, for performance above and beyond the call of death."
The hearse and ambu
lance were arriving. Crawley looked at the M.E. and pointed at Abe. "No plastic body bag," he said. "He gets a blanket."
Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 Page 18
