“We’ll think of something, Paddy. You’ll think of something. Just give it a little time.”
Patrick nodded and gazed into the middle distance, moved by his friend’s support and respect, listening to the music, to Stina’s little girl voice with its sublime profundity of sadness.
Danny moved through the wreckage in the Network 4 building, surveying the scene, listening to the voice on the other end of his cell phone. Jesus, what a mess. And there it is, Danny boy: what a godawful mess. The place had been shot up pretty badly, which didn’t surprise Danny in the slightest: those SWAT guys, to his mind, were the frat boys of every police force. Young, gung-ho, and irredeemably stupid. Shoot first and take aim later. A forensics team picked through the debris, and Danny wondered why they were bothering: what could they reasonably hope to find among this accumulation of splinters, chunks of masonry, broken glass, spent shells, and one dead body? And besides, it was all academic: there wasn’t any doubt about who they were after now. Broder was his man.
He listened impatiently for a few moments and then said, “I don’t fucking know, James. This is an old building; there’s all sorts of corridors and stairwells and crap that even the owners don’t know about. The kid worked here, for Christ’s sake. Probably knew this place like the back of his hand. … What? Yes, I know it’s not good enough, but there you have it. He got away from us, alright?” He stopped at a door and lit a cigarette; to hell with the law. “And can I just say, James, that if that bonehead SWAT team hadn’t barged in there like a bunch of drunken militiamen, I wouldn’t have lost sight of Broder in the first place. Did you know Cathy Morrissey fractured her collarbone in the fall…? Yeah, well, there’s something to get pissed about. Yeah, I know it wasn’t your fault… Hold on, I’ve another call coming through…”
Danny pressed the call change button and stepped through a door, over a small pile of rubble, into a corridor. He started walking and said, “Yeah, go ahead… Peter. I didn’t expect… Uh-huh… No, it’s fine. I’m fine. I wasn’t…really involved, I was too far back. Uh-huh… Listen, Peter, I gotta go. I’ve got the Captain on the other line. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? …I promise, I promise. Take care.” He switched lines again. “James, yes… Look, can we just stop fighting about this, please? Neither of us was to blame. And this isn’t over yet. Patrick is still out there somewhere. …No, I’m not ‘calling him Patrick now.’ I just said it, it doesn’t mean anything. I barely met the kid for five minutes. Anyway, forget that—what was the damage to our guys? …Uh-huh. No fatalities. That’s good, that’s good to know…”
He crushed the cigarette underfoot and walked through another door into one of the Network 4 canteens, a sterile, washed-out place, much the same as every other corporate canteen he’d ever been in. Cathy sat at the far side, by a window, nursing a coffee. Her right side was strapped up in a sling. She waved at Danny with her left hand; he waved back and held up a finger.
“Alright…alright… I gotta run, James. I’ll call you later when I know more, okay? …Talk to you then.”
He filled up a Styrofoam cup at the self-serve counter and carried it over to Cathy, sitting opposite her. She smiled sadly. Danny pointed to her collarbone.
“How’s the injury?”
Cathy shrugged. “Aw…it’s alright. I’ll live.”
“Okay. Good.”
They sat in silence for a long moment. Then Cathy leaned forward and said, “Danny, I…”
“Hold on. Please. There are a few questions I have to…things that I want to know. About Patrick.”
“Shoot.” She smiled. “Sorry. No pun intended.”
Danny smiled also. “I think I know the answer to this one already, but…did you ever suspect, Cathy? Anything?”
Cathy shook her head. “No. Nothing. He was just…Patrick, you know? A guy I worked with.”
Danny said, “Well, I mean…what kind of guy did he seem to you? Honestly.”
“He seemed…nice. He was nice. I never found him anything but sweet, and smart, and funny, and yahda yahda yahda. He was a nice kid. Honestly.”
Danny leaned back and breathed out slowly.
“So…is there anything you’ve found out?” Cathy asked. “About what started all of this?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I mean, we know some of the background details a little better now. Robert—the guy you met, the guy who was here last night? His full name was Robert Eustace. Grew up in LA. Patrick and he met in university, they took a lot of courses together, played sports, traveled South America, Europe… Best friends, I guess.” Danny paused. “He, uh…he had a son.”
“Patrick?”
“No, Robert. He had a son, a two-year-old. With a former girlfriend. She received a package this morning—couriered with no return address.”
Cathy raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t worry, it was nothing…weird,” Danny said. “It was actually a set of his old college books. You know, novels, poetry, literary criticism, that sort of thing.”
“Right. And the third member? The big guy?”
“Believed to be—we’re not 100 per cent sure yet—Alessandro Tomassi, a childhood friend of Patrick. His oldest friend, I suppose. Alessandro’s been a roadie, a sound engineer, a mechanic…he’s done different things. We talked to his mother earlier today. She hasn’t seen him since he left home at about 17, so…we can’t be definite that it’s him. Yet.”
Cathy looked away and said softly, “Alessandro. Nice name.”
“Yeah, it is. A sonorous Italian name. Alessandro.”
They smiled at each other and lapsed into silence again. Eventually Cathy put her hand on Danny’s arm. She said, “Listen. You’ve got work to do, you’ve got things to check out. Go on. Don’t let me hold you up.”
“Yeah. I suppose I should really… Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
She nodded vigorously and pointed into the distance. “Positive. Go. Get out of here.”
“Okay.” Danny stood up. “Listen, Cathy—would you like to meet for a drink some night this week? Just to…you know. Talk things through. I don’t know why, but this whole thing has gotten to me on a really personal level, you know?”
She smiled and shook his hand. “I’m not surprised. That’d be great, Danny. Thanks.”
“And don’t worry, I won’t make a pass at you or anything. I, ah—what’s the phrase? ‘Bat for the other side.’”
“I figured.”
Danny smiled. “Okay, then. I’ll call you?”
She nodded yes; Danny tipped her a salute with his finger and moved to leave, then stopped and turned back. He said, “You know the really funny thing? I sort of half-agree with what the stupid bastard was aiming to do—but I still have to take him down. It was wrong.”
“I know you do,” Cathy said. “And I think Patrick knows that, too.”
The sun was slowly setting, shadows lengthening and the world bathed in that lovely amber glow, as Sandro and Patrick clasped hands and embraced on the street outside an adult bookstore and a small premises dealing in used car parts. A dour-faced Asian man selling hot food from a stall looked at them for a second, then went back to his work. Sandro hoisted a huge rucksack onto his back.
Patrick took a step back and appraised him, like a fretful mother sending her child to school for the first day, and said, “So you’ll be okay? What time are you meeting this guy?”
“About 8.30. Don’t worry: Raul is cool. He takes an alternative route out of the country. He’ll get us there.”
“Alright. Good. Don’t get fucking caught now, okay?” He laughed nervously.
“I won’t,” Sandro said. “I’m gonna wait in that bar across the street. No cops in there.”
“Right. Well. I guess I’d better go. A few things to do.”
Sandro nodded. They embraced again.
“E-mail a contact number to my hotmail address in about a month,” Patrick said. “You know the one. I’ll call you from wherever I am.”
“You g
ot it.”
Patrick swallowed dryly and said, “Take care, big guy.”
“You too, Paddy.”
Patrick took a few steps away before turning back. Sandro hadn’t moved.
“Hey. You did the right thing,” Patrick called. “Last night. You did the right thing in leaving Rob like that. It’s what he would have wanted us to do.”
Sandro nodded again. “You did the right thing too, man. All of it. It was the right fucking thing. Don’t forget it.”
Patrick nodded this time. Then he turned on his heel and started walking away.
A deep breath; insert the coin and dial. “Detective Danny Everard, please. Okay… No, his voicemail is fine.” Patrick waited for a moment, looking around edgily. “It’s me. Midnight; the roof of the old warehouse in Brooklyn. You know where I mean. And Danny—please come alone.”
Danny didn’t bother telling anyone else about the call. This wasn’t something to divulge to someone else, opening it up to communal analysis, a rational appraisal. There was nothing rational about this whole case, he smiled to himself, so why change now? And more than that, he knew: this was one of those rare moments in life, when the moment itself takes on volition, a momentum uninfluenced by those involved. It was as if you stepped into the moment and became a part of it.
He pushed hard and the roof doors swung open, banging loudly on the concrete outside, and Danny thought: Aw, shut up, Everard. “Stepping into the moment.” What kind of horseshit is that? He chambered his gun, replaced it in its holster, and flipped open the clasp. He walked through the doors—unlocked, as he’d known they would be—and out into a high breeze. Danny stumbled, surprised by the strength of the wind, and regained his balance. He took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair, and stepped into the moment anyway.
He stood, in the center of the roof, waiting; eyes closed, fingers tensed, and ready to move for the gun. He didn’t hear Patrick behind him until the younger man spoke.
“I knew you’d come alone. That you’d do that much for me.”
Danny turned, slowly, until he was facing Patrick; he made a slight bow of acknowledgement, as if to say: You’re welcome. Patrick was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with a picture of some big-haired heavy metal band on the front. Irony as a force in the world; Danny could appreciate that. Patrick wasn’t wearing a balaclava, and he looked much younger, more boyish than Danny remembered, hair blowing around his eyes in the glow of the streetlights.
“And I knew you were gay,” Patrick said. “From the first moment I met you. I suppose I have a feel for these things. That’s why I foolishly thought you’d understand what we were trying to do.”
“I did understand. I understood completely. But it was wrong, Patrick. It was wrong, and I’m duty-bound to stop it.”
“I know you are. I understand you, too.”
Danny nodded to himself, thinking, realizing. “You wanted me to know it was you. At the studio, with the phone in the wastepaper basket. Messing around like that, taking risks. You wanted me to know, didn’t you?”
Patrick shrugged and didn’t speak for a long while. Eventually he said softly, “Sometimes…some of our actions can take on a life of their own. Don’t you think so? They go beyond our control.”
He started lazily scratching one arm. He looked so callow, so guileless, standing there, hip cocked in a vaguely feminine pose, that it was almost infuriating.
“Patrick, come on,” Danny said. “You know what I have to do here.”
“I won’t let you send me to jail, Danny. I couldn’t face that.”
“Hey, I don’t have a choice. This isn’t driving without insurance or casual fucking drug use—two people are dead.” Danny stopped. “Your friend is dead.”
Patrick smiled, his eyes faraway, his fingers lightly rubbing the goose bumps on his arm. He didn’t move to speak. Danny shook his head angrily, then spread his arms wide.
“A stand-off on the rooftop? A bit clichéd for you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, sure it’s predictable…” Patrick shrugged. “Can’t be Oscar Wilde all the time, you know?”
Silence hung between them. The wind off the East River whipped about their heads and for some reason Danny noticed that an advertizing banner had come loose from a partially constructed building nearby. He couldn’t make out the words, it was being buffeted about too quickly.
He took a step forward and said, “For God’s sake… This has gone too far, okay? You can end it right now.”
Patrick smiled. “Or you can, Danny.”
He pulled his balaclava from his back pocket and began fitting it on his head.
“What are you…? Don’t. Listen to me,” Danny said. “I know what you’re trying to do here. Think about what you’re doing.”
Patrick spoke through the wool, his words slightly muffled: “I am. I have done. I always do. That’s sort of the point.”
Danny swallowed hard and said, “Patrick, please—drop the gun. Please. You won’t win, kid. You won’t beat me.”
Light glinted from the barrel of the pistol Patrick had pulled from his waistband. He smiled at Danny, teeth visible in the mouthpiece of the balaclava.
“You seem an educated, cultured man; let me recite a few words from a song. ‘Leave the road and memorize this life that passed before my eyes…nothing is going my way.’ What do you think, Danny? Did we make our statement?”
Danny looked away, looked down. He smiled wryly and nodded, as if in agreement. He flexed the fingers of his right hand. He smiled and raised his eyebrows and said, “Every writer knows the value of a proper ending. So long, Mr. Wilde.”
Their eyes locked for a split-second, then both men moved. In one motion Danny dived to the side, whipped his gun out, and fired twice. It cracked into the night air, it echoed across the darkness.
Roundfire Books, put simply, publish great stories. Whether it’s
literary or popular, a gentle tale or a pulsating thriller, the
connecting theme in all Roundfire fiction titles is that once you
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