When I passed Parson’s Lane, a pair of headlights appeared in my rearview mirror. So ended my temporary ownership of River Road. I was happy for more company than the silent river afforded me. There are occasions in life when alone time with your thoughts is as destructive as an all-night drunk or picking a fight with the wrong guy at the bar. I actually smiled at the mirror in relief. The relief was short-lived, because before the smile had left my lips, the headlights rushed up close to my bumper. The rain and the glare of the headlights made it impossible for me to make out anything about the car or its driver. I checked my gauges. I was already driving ten miles an hour over the speed limit, so I didn’t think my slow driving was the issue. And if that wasn’t the issue, trouble was.
I was all too familiar with this particular brand of trouble. Last Christmas morning, three bikers from the Maniacs motorcycle gang tried to shotgun me and run me off the road. Although two of them were killed trying and one wound up with a life sentence, they’d come a little too close to accomplishing their goal for my comfort. I didn’t know if that was what was happening here, but if it was, I wasn’t going to fuck around. I grabbed the Glock out of my ankle holster, holding it in my right hand across my left thigh. If the guy behind me meant to do me harm, he had no choice but to come along the driver’s side of my Mustang. The river to my right and the houses that dotted the riverbank limited his options.
I wasn’t in the mood for cat and mouse, especially when I was cast as the rodent. Nor was I up for a game of chicken, so I decided to force the action. I eased my foot off the gas, gently slowing down. The car behind me almost hit my rear bumper, but then slowed in kind. My guess was I’d confused him some and he was now aware that I was fully aware of him. Then I sped up at a sharp bend in the road where it veered away from the river. I figured I knew this area of Smithtown better than almost anyone who might be following me. I’d hoped to put enough distance between us for me to duck my car into a driveway and let him scoot past. But before I could even think about it, there he was again, his rear end fishtailing a little on the wet pavement as he gave his car more gas to catch up.
The angle and distance between us did cut down on the glare in my mirrors enough to allow me a better look at the car behind me. It was a two-door orange Honda Civic that had been transformed from a used econo-box import into a street racer. When I was on the job, I hated chasing these things down in my Crown Vic. They were nimble and the fastest ones had nitrous oxide injection systems. Yeah, laughing gas, but there was nothing funny in it for me. So I knew that as much straight-line speed as my Mustang could deliver, it might not be enough to let me shake this guy if I found a stretch where I could floor it. The lack of glare also revealed that there were two men in the chase car, a driver and someone riding shotgun. My sense was that in this instance “shotgun” wasn’t just a figure of speech.
As I approached Edgewood, I slowed just enough to turn left without rolling over. I didn’t figure that I would lose him simply because I neglected to use my turn signal. Edgewood was fairly straight and narrow, with traffic in both directions, and might allow me to test how much speed his car could deliver. The rear end of the Mustang got a little loose in the turn and my right rear tire kissed the curb pretty hard, but not enough to throw me into a spin. As I fought to get the car straight, I realized for the first time how dry my mouth was and how hard my heart was hammering. My shirt was sticking to my back and I thought I could smell my own sweat. My leg muscles ached and twitched, and I made sure to keep my right index finger away from the Glock’s trigger. I didn’t want to shoot through my door—not yet, anyway—or, worse, through my own leg. When I got the Mustang back under control, I put my foot all the way down on the gas and not gently. The tires spun a little on the rain-slicked blacktop, then gripped. And when they did, I was thrown back in my seat. I didn’t bother looking at my speedometer, because I knew there was only one traffic light between me and 25A.
I did, however, check my rearview. It had nothing positive to show me. The Civic handled the turn onto Edgewood with less difficulty and was gaining ground, and as it came closer to me, it began to veer slowly into the oncoming lane in order to get beside me. I was too far away from 25A to outrun him. The roads just ahead of me that I might turn onto led into twisty streets and dead ends that would put me at an even greater disadvantage. Besides, if I tried a turn at this point on wet pavement at this speed, I had zero chance of keeping my car from going airborne. No, my only chance was to get as far as Fifty Acre Road and try a left turn there. Fifty Acre was also straight and narrow.
When I checked my mirrors again, his front right fender was next to my rear driver’s side wheel well. I couldn’t risk any more speed, so I put my gun hand on the steering wheel just long enough to hit the window switch. As the window lowered I changed hands again, put my right arm across my chest, and rested the barrel of the Glock on the windowsill. Then I caught a break. Horns blared and headlights appeared in the opposite direction, forcing the Civic to fall back behind me. The light ahead of me turned red and I slowed enough to make the guy behind me believe I might actually stop. I didn’t, zipping right through it. He hesitated, but not long enough for me to gain much advantage.
Almost immediately, he veered over to get next to me. I slowed some to prepare to turn and as I did I saw another pair of headlights appear behind the Civic. Something flashed, flashed again, again. Gunfire? I didn’t stop to check. As I swung hard left onto Fifty Acre, his front end nearly sideswiped my rear quarter panel. There were more flashes and the Civic slowed, then spun out of control. I made it onto Fifty Acre Road, my rear end fishtailing like mad. It probably took me fifteen hundred feet to get the car steady again, but there were no headlights in my mirrors. He hadn’t made it. I raced straight up Fifty Acre, slowed to subsonic speed, turned left onto Branglebrink, left onto Old Mill, and finally back onto Nissequogue River Road. The only things I saw in my mirrors were darkness and beaded rainwater on my rear window.
Once again approaching the intersection of Nissequogue and Edgewood, I hit the window switch and put the gun back on my thigh, the muscles in my right arm aching, the ones in my hand cramping. I shook my arm and flexed my hand. I was spent, but not beyond curiosity. I went over it all in my head: the Civic, the chase, those other headlights, the flashes. It didn’t make any sense. None of it. I shook my head, as if that ever did any good except in cartoons. When I got to the intersection, I actually stopped at the light and noticed the sky to the left was brighter than it should have been.
This time I stopped at the light and when it turned green, I crossed slowly onto Edgewood. As I did I noticed the fire and heard the sirens. I was pretty far away, but guessed the fire was coming from close to where Fifty Acre met Edgewood. I thought about not turning, about just getting back to the Paragon and collapsing. I mean, I already had all I could handle with what Judge Kaufman had revealed to me about Micah Spears. I didn’t think about it for very long and, like a summer moth, turned left and headed directly for the flames.
55
(THURSDAY NIGHT)
Two Fourth Precinct white-and-blues in full throat, light bars flashing, screamed by me as I rolled toward the fire. When I got there, the two SCPD cars were parked at angles across Edgewood, blocking any traffic coming from my direction. I pulled over to the curb, holstered my weapon, got out of the Mustang, and walked past the patrol cars.
The Civic that had chased me was now orange with flames, its paint blackening, charred, and peeling. The smell of a car fire is all about the acrid stink of melting plastics and synthetic rubber. You could taste the hot metal on your tongue, feel it at the back of your throat. And just beneath all the chemical stench and taste of smoking-hot metal were two other odors familiar to a retired cop who’d been at lots of car fires: burning flesh and burnt human hair. Those things have distinctive odors all their own. And when I saw the one body stretched out on the pavement, I knew the other guy hadn’t made
it out. Besides the smells, the heat was intense, the flames snapping at the night.
“Yo, yo, buddy,” a uniform yelled at me, his hand raised. “Where the fuck you think you’re going?”
As I began to answer, the sirens and blaring horns of two St. James Fire Department trucks, coming up the other side of Edgewood, blotted out my words. The cop shook his head and rolled his eyes at the noise. The cop was young. I didn’t recognize him and he didn’t recognize me. No shock there. Once you retire, you might as well go live in a museum with all the other fossils and dinosaurs, for all the new guys care.
When the trucks came to a stop and they cut their sirens, the cop waved at me impatiently to come on and finish.
“My name’s Murphy,” I said. “I used to be in the Second Precinct. I was coming back from visiting a friend up in Nissequogue when I saw the flames. I wanted to see if anyone needed help. What’s up?”
He thought about busting my balls or simply shooing me away like a good old man, but he decided I was all right.
“What’s up? Nothing good. Car blew up. One of the occupants is toast.” He laughed at his own joke. “The other’s dead on the pavement over there.”
“An accident?”
He shook his head and shrugged at the same time. “Yes and no.”
“Huh?”
He threw a thumb over his shoulder at the body. “That guy there has two entrance wounds and an exit wound that I can see. Looks like he had enough life in him to crawl out and die.”
“Yeah, fire can be a great motivator.”
He laughed at that. “Can I steal that line?”
“Sure. It’s a big hit at parties.”
That confused him a little bit. Like I said, he was young.
“I wouldn’t feel too sorry for them, Murphy. Looks like they got it before they were gonna give it to somebody else. The vic over there with the gunshot trauma, he has a Glock .40 in his waistband and we recovered an AR15 over on the other side of the vehicle. These two weren’t going wild turkey or deer hunting.”
“Any ID?”
“Nothing on the two vics, but the car’s registered to some guy in CI.”
“Central Islip,” I mumbled to myself aloud.
“I gotta go,” the cop said. “And do me a solid, get back over by your car. The civilians are starting to come out to have a look.”
“No problem. Thanks.”
I did as he asked and walked back toward my car, head down. I had been in his shoes plenty of times and I didn’t want to make the kid’s job any harder than it would already be. Given that this was now a crime scene with bodies and weapons, it was going to be a long night for a lot of people with badges and shields. When I looked up, I froze. There was another car—a black Cadillac CTS coupe—parked directly behind my Mustang. A tall man, a man I recognized, was leaning against the front fender of the Caddy.
“Good evening, Gus Murphy,” he said, with a smile in his voice. The smile didn’t reach all the way to his gray eyes. He managed not to have his mouth look particularly feral as it did when he was in my van.
“Mr. Lagunov.”
“Please, please, I prefer Mr. Gordon. When in Rome . . . You know this saying?”
“I know the saying, but we’re a long way from Rome.”
He laughed a chilly laugh. “But not so far as Grozny.”
“No, not that far. Are you here to threaten me again?”
“On the contrary, I am here to save your life, Gus. Or, to be more correct, I did just save your life. You don’t suppose those two men were making an attempt to drag race with you, do you?” There was that laugh again. “I think not. You are good, though, resourceful. I am willing to wager that you had your sidearm on your thigh as you tried to evade the other car. You might even have killed one of them. Yes, I am confident you would have gotten at least one. And if you were lucky . . . who knows what the outcome might have been. Most men, even most policemen, would have panicked. You did not, did you?”
“Panic? No. Believe it or not, I have some experience with this stuff.”
“Yes,” he said, “the motorcycle gang. You did quite well there. Three of them. Two dead. One in prison and you are still standing.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about me.”
“I am prepared. It is part of my job. Still, Gus Murphy, I do not think your lack of panic comes from experience.”
“I guess I have a different way of looking at life now than when I was on the job.”
His expression changed to one that looked almost human.
“The death of a loved one changes you, yes? No man should bury his son. In Russia, our history is too full of fathers burying sons.”
“How many fathers have grieved because of you?”
There it was, that feral smile. It was a hunter’s smile, but one tinged with pride and vanity.
“Many, I suppose. Very many. Some in warfare, but some not. Two more tonight. Would you have rather me let them murder you?”
I ignored the question. “Who were they?”
“I am not certain.” He gave a careless shrug. “Is it of consequence? Their intent was very clear to me.”
“You were following me?”
“Obviously.”
“Even if I knew where Slava was, I would never have risked leading you or one of your men to him.”
“But you have spoken to him. Otherwise you would not know my name.”
“That was careless of me.”
“This man you know as Slava is proving to be more resourceful than I would have believed for a police thug. And before you start defending him, Gus Murphy, let me inform you of his sins. He, too, has made many fathers and mothers bury their young.”
“I know what he did,” I said, maybe a bit too loudly. “But he was lied to and tricked into it.”
Lagunov laughed at me. “So if he had blown up Chechen women and children and their terrorist husbands and fathers, this would have been good, then?” He shook his head at me. “No, Gus, this is what you Americans call splitting hairs. He might have been tricked into blowing up those buildings and maybe he did kill many innocent people without wanting to, but he was still willing to kill with bombs. Bombs are stupid things, blind things. They do not see a difference between Muslims and Christians or women and men, old or young. Why do you protect this man?”
“That’s my business.”
“I like you, Gus Murphy. More, I respect you. But your business now is my business and I will do my job no matter what is required. For instance, killing those men to protect you.”
“Why do that? Why kill those men? Why protect me at all?”
“Because you are my last best link to Slava.” He spit on the ground in front of him. “My idiot subordinate, he used very poor judgment in his handling of Mikel. As you might say, he got carried away and Mikel expired before he could reveal what he knew. For now, that leaves me with you and you with me.”
“You forgot to mention Magdalena.”
“Ah, yes, the beautiful Magdalena.” He smiled that smile again. “How is she enjoying her new accommodations in the Royal Dearborn Hotel? My compliments to you and your security people. See, you are a resourceful man. You did that on the fly, did you not? No one instructed you how to go about protecting her. That was good and the people you have hired to guard her, they are excellent. I have even done business with some of them, but I do not have this job because I am a fool. You cannot afford to have her guarded twenty-four hours a day for very long. And why risk her for such a man as Slava? Give him to me and I will end his suffering and guilt quickly, painlessly. You have my word. I have too much respect for you to offer you financial incentive and I have no enjoyment from threatening a woman. But, as I said, I will do—”
“Your job no matter what.” I thought for a moment and suddenly all the noise from the fire, t
he snapping flames, the fire chief screaming instructions, the swooshing of the fire hoses all came rushing in to fill the vacuum I had been in since I’d spotted Lagunov leaning on his Caddy. “I am waiting for a call from Slava,” I heard myself say. “I will tell him what you are offering. That’s the best I can do. Give me a number I can reach you at.”
He made a puzzled face as he reached into his wallet. He handed me a card. It was heavy stock and embossed, though the only thing on it was a telephone number. No name. No address. Only a number with an area code I did not recognize.
“Day or night,” he said.
“You know you are awfully calm for a man who just killed two people.”
“Would you have me shed tears for the men who were going to kill you?”
“Do you shed tears at all?”
“I am Russian,” he said, as if that explained everything. If it did, I was too thick to understand.
He saw the confusion on my face.
“Russians cry easily. But we do not cry like the people here or in Europe because things are hard or sad. Life is hard. Life is sad. No, Gus, we cry for sentimental things. The sight of an old woman’s face or of a baby. We cry at the sight of an old friend we have not seen for years or at the sound of an old folk song. We cry for sentimental things, things of the soul.”
I was tempted to ask if he believed he had a soul, but who was I to ask? He stared at me for a moment, nodded, and said good night. I waited until I couldn’t see his taillights before getting into my car and leaving. I was pretty numb during the ride back to the Paragon. I kept checking my mirrors to see if I could spot Lagunov behind me. I could not, though somehow I knew he was there. The craziest part was that I found some measure of comfort in that.
What You Break Page 27
