by R.J. Ellory
Jesus Christ. The girl was alive.
“So who were these DBs?” Bryant asked. “Sandià’s people, right?”
Madigan nodded.
“Enough of them left to see who they were?”
“Saw one. Know his face. Can’t get his name. I’ll look through the files and sort out who was who.”
“Heard it was a turkey shoot. A massacre.”
“Near as damn it. Looks like people were waiting on the back roof, and these guys came up the stairs and got it full frontal. They didn’t have a prayer.”
“Dope or cash?”
“Don’t know. Could have been both.”
They reached Bryant’s office, went inside, took seats on either side of the desk.
“Oh, come on, Vincent. You know the routines better than anyone. That’s why I want you on this thing. You knew this place. You knew it was one of Sandià’s houses. You go down to the morgue and take a good look at these guys, and I bet you can tell me their names without looking at the damned files. Tuesday, second Tuesday of the month, four guys coming into that house. What are they gonna be bringing?”
“Cash, most likely.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred, maybe a quarter mill.”
“And everyone is gonna know about it, right? Anyone who works that zone, anyone who lives within two blocks, anyone who deals out of the park . . . They’re gonna know about this delivery schedule, aren’t they?”
“Sure.”
“But they ain’t gonna risk anything ’cause it’s Sandià’s money, right?”
“Right.” Madigan felt the muscles tighten in his face. He was trying to look relaxed, nonchalant, like this was just a regular day, a regular meeting with Bryant, a regular investigation. The very money of which Bryant spoke was right there in his locker on the ground floor.
“So the question is this, Vincent . . . Who is either dumb enough or ballsy enough to rip off Sandià on his own turf? Who’s got the cojones to do that?”
“That is the question,” Madigan said.
“Sure as hell is. And that’s the question you need to get me an answer to, Vincent. I need a real answer to that question, and I need it fast. I can’t have four dead guys and nothing for the show ’n’ tell. I need you to get on this as a priority, okay?”
“Okay.” Madigan started to get up.
“Oh, and we got this guy Walsh from IA all over the place. Duncan Walsh. Career cop. Doing his IA shift to get a gold shield before he’s forty. You know the routine, right? Stay out of his way, but if he catches you, act polite and helpful but say nothing. Usual beat.”
“He asked for me?”
Bryant smiled. “Why? You worried he’s going to ask for you?”
Madigan tried smiling back. It felt awkward, out of place, and he dropped it. “You show me one cop in Robbery-Homicide who’s got time to talk to IA. Everyone can hang for something, Sarge. You know that.”
“Go do your worst, Vincent. I need the crew who pulled this stunt, and I need them faster than yesterday.”
Madigan reached the door.
“Oh, and Vincent?”
Madigan turned back.
“Get the kid ID’d as a priority. She’s up at Harlem. Be good to know what the hell she was doing in that house this morning.”
Madigan made it ten yards down the hallway, and then cut left into the restroom. He barely made it to the sink before he retched dryly. Had he eaten anything, perhaps he would have been sick.
He sluiced his face, scooped some cold water, and drank thirstily. Went down like ice, burning right through his chest and into the pit of his gut.
When he looked back at his own reflection in the mirror he wondered if anyone else could read the guilt and fear painted large in his eyes.
9
STRANGER IN MY HEART
I search out a Quaalude. I chew it dry. It tastes like shit. I sit there for a minute or two and wait for something to happen.
I think of the money.
I think of the guy’s face as we came through that window and let rip with a tornado of gunfire.
I think of the little girl.
I wish she were dead.
If she was dead I would feel bad that she was dead, but I would feel better that she was dead.
I am confused.
I think I should take another ’lude, but I don’t.
And then I think about my own kids. Cassie’s birthday is coming up. She’ll be eighteen on February 11. Christ, where do the years go? And her mom? Angie Duggan . . . Hell, she was the love of my sorry life. At least I thought so then. Six years and three months we lasted, and then it all went to shit. Met Ivonne in the middle of that, back in . . . When the hell was that? Ninety-four? Yeah, it was July of ninety-four, just after Independence Day. That affair went on right through the divorce from Angie, and Angie never knew a damned thing about it. Suspected sure, but never got me on that one. But she accused me of playing around long before I ever did. She was always accusing me of things I hadn’t done. We used to joke that she’d make a great cop. And so there was Ivonne and me, and then there was Adam, the child I had with her. My boy Adam. Light of my second life, star of my heavens. And he’s just turned thirteen, for God’s sake. He’s a little man. The Little Man of the House. Haven’t seen him since Christmas. Ivonne won’t let me in the damned door. And then there was Catherine, and we stayed married for over seven years, even longer than with Angie. And we had two kids—Lucy, all of six years old, seven years old a week before Cassie turns eighteen. And Tom. Three years old. Smarter than all of them put together. Two wives, one mistress, four kids. And all of those kids are being told I am a waste of space. They’re young, though. I can win them back, despite everything. Maybe I can win them back. Cassie, she would help me. Cassie knows who I am. She sees the truth. She sees that underneath all this madness is a father she could love, perhaps even respect.
I try to think how I would feel if I heard Lucy was shot. She ain’t a helluva lot younger than the Hispanic girl we found. So how would I feel if she was shot in the gut and up in Harlem Hospital? And then I wonder how I would feel if a cop was assigned to investigate her shooting, and that cop was just like me.
Then I try not to think. It does no good to think.
There’s a stranger in my heart. He has arrived uninvited. I wish he would leave, but I know he will not.
I am in deep.
But there’s a way out.
There’s always a way out.
I need my wits. I need all my smarts. I need everything I’ve got and more besides.
I should eat something now and drink some strong black coffee, but the ’lude is creeping up on me and I’m starting to settle a little. I’m starting to think that maybe I can hang it all together in such a way as it stays together . . . and it’s all going to be fine . . .
I also know that when the ’lude wears off I’ll still be full of shit.
I stand up. I go downstairs. I retrieve the duffel from my locker. I feel for my center of balance. I find it. I start walking. I’m going to get rid of the car. Wipe it all down and get rid of it. I’m going to secure the money. I’m going to take care of everything.
It’s gonna be fine.
Seriously.
It’s karmic. I am invincible. I do too much good to be waylaid by this shit.
Off I go.
10
PORT OF SOULS
There was something about hospitals. Something unique and specific and troubling.
Harlem Hospital up at Lenox was a Level 1 Trauma Center. Madigan had been there a thousand times. Triage, most days, was an indoor car wreck. Too many people, too few beds, same as any other public hospital. Noise was unbelievable—those who weren’t screaming were shouting; those who weren’t shouting were trying to be heard over the screamers and shouters; and in the middle of it all came the doctors and nurses, every one of them doing their damnedest to hold it all together despite the fact that it was all falling apa
rt.
Hospitals made Madigan nervous.
Souls were everywhere. Souls departing, souls arriving, all of them looking for new bodies. That’s what it felt like. It scared the crap out of him.
There was also a lot of drugs. Made him feel like a quit smoker in a cigar store.
One time he’d come to question a gunshot victim and the duty doctor took him aside and asked if he was okay.
“You don’t look so hot,” the doctor had said.
Madigan was taken aback, left without words for a moment. He wondered how many others could read what was really going on with him. “I always look like this,” Madigan said, and he tried to smile. He could hear the false bravado in his own voice.
“Then you’re probably in worse shape than you think. You anemic?”
“Nope.”
“Diabetic?”
“Nope.”
“You on medication?”
Madigan had glanced away, back again, turned his mouth down at the corners. “Take a painkiller every once in a while. That’s all . . .”
The doctor had smiled knowingly. “You think I don’t see you?” he’d said. “You think I can’t tell?”
“Tell what?”
“You are off somewhere, my friend. You are somewhere in the clouds. Look at your pupils; look at your skin tone. You think I don’t know? What the hell have you taken?”
Madigan hesitated for a moment. He felt transparent, hollow, like nothing. “Taken enough of your bullshit, for a start,” he replied, and walked away.
Only when he reached the door did he appreciate how much his hands were shaking.
This time one of the duty nurses was helpful, businesslike, no personal questions. He flashed his ID, asked after the gunshot girl, was directed to the Trauma Unit in back of Triage.
Madigan found a couple of uniforms. He recognized one of them.
“She doing?” Madigan asked.
“Nearly bled out. Slim at best. They say she’s fifty–fifty. Next few hours will tell.”
“She say anything?”
“Asked if she could get a BLT and a root beer, side order of fries.”
“The sarcasm we can do without,” Madigan said.
“Far as I know she hasn’t said a word. You want to go in and see her?”
“Sure.”
The uniform stepped aside and let Madigan pass.
In the bed she looked half the size she had at the house.
Tubes everywhere. Nose, mouth, stuff stuck in her arms, her legs.
Madigan stood there for a week. That’s what it felt like.
It crept up on him. The guilt. The conscience. It crept up on him with every passing second, every second that made him see how small she was, how pretty she was, how fragile and delicate and broken and impossibly damaged.
He saw her like she was his own, could have been, might have been.
He remembered Cassie at eight, nine years old. He saw Lucy, not so much younger than this one. He remembered holding her when she was newborn, and feeling that sense of power and duty and responsibility and fear. Fear that he would get it wrong, that he would do or say something that would irreparably damage her. He saw his own children, every one of them, and they were all in that bed, and they were surrounded by wires and tubes and humming machines, and it was all because of him . . .
There was a sound behind him and he turned.
“Was a through-and-through,” the nurse said. The nurse was black and pretty and she had cornrow hair, and when she smiled there was something deeply sympathetic in her expression, like she had enough patience to care for the whole fucked-up world.
“Missed most of her vitals, but punctured a lung and put a hole in her gut on the ricochet. Went out her back.”
“Odds?” Madigan asked.
“Odds are never great with the little ones. Big bullets and small bodies don’t play well together.”
“You her attending?”
“Yes, I am.”
“What’s your name?”
“Nancy. Nancy Lewis.”
Madigan gave her his card. “Keep me posted, huh? She wakes up, I need to talk to her.”
“We’re keeping her sedated,” Nancy said. “Think it’s gonna be that way for a while. Only way to stop her moving. She’s been stabilized. They fixed the hole in her lung, but she’s back in surgery in . . .” She glanced at her watch. “An hour, maybe an hour and a half, depending on her vital signs and whether there’s any adverse to the transfusion.”
“Just let me know if there’s any significant changes, okay?”
“I might have to call you and tell you she died.”
“Had plenty of those calls before,” Madigan replied.
Nancy left the room.
Madigan took another step toward the bed. If the shot was a through-and-through then the bullet was still in that room somewhere. It would have pancaked for sure, but there’d be enough of it remaining to determine the caliber. He tried to recall the weaponry. He’d carried a Mossberg, had the .44 as backup but he could not remember if he’d fired it in the house. Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. The storage unit would tell them what Madigan wanted them to believe. Williams shot Fulton with a .44; Fulton shot Landry and Williams with a .38. So Williams must have been carrying the .44, and if a .44 went through the girl and into the wall then Williams must have done it. Neat as paint. That .44 was a lift from a crime scene. Trace that back and it’d wind up somewhere in Harlem, some dealer’s house, the scene of some other killing at some other time. It would never come back to Madigan. Madigan was a ghost.
He began to settle.
He took his cellphone from his pocket and held it up above her face. He snapped the picture, checked it, snapped again. It would have to do. He’d have to have something for people to look at if he was going to trawl around East Harlem and the park asking questions.
Collateral damage. That was the truth of it. That was what he told himself, what he tried to make himself believe.
Sometimes it was just your day to die.
Outside the room Madigan spoke to the uniform again.
“Fingerprints?” Madigan asked.
“They’re being run.”
Madigan shook his head. “They won’t find her that way. She has a mother somewhere, a father too, and someone’s gonna miss her before too long. I’m gonna head back there and start checking up on neighbors and whatever.” He started away, turned back. “You know if her picture was sent over for Missing Persons to chase up?”
“Not a clue.”
“Okay, I can do that too,” Madigan said.
“You want I should call you if anything happens?”
Madigan smiled dryly. “No, I’ll tell you what . . . Why don’t you write me a letter and post it a week from Tuesday?”
The uniform shook his head resignedly. Sometimes the only way they got on was to talk crap to one another.
Madigan handed over his card and walked away.
He didn’t look back.
11
NOBODY’S CITY
It took the best part of an hour to drive home. He went Triborough, then 278 and 87, all the way up to the stadium before heading east on 161st.
Madigan took the bag of cash from the trunk, the shoes from beneath the driver’s seat, and walked it into the house. He upended the bag onto the kitchen table and looked at the money. He could smell it. It smelled used and dirty, like all money did.
He bundled it back into the bag, and then hurried upstairs. He pulled back the carpet at the end of the upper landing, lifted a floorboard, and pushed the bag down inside the cavity. He reached left, lifted out a small wooden box, and from inside he took a ziplock evidence bag. He tipped a half dozen pills into his palm, put one in his mouth, the rest in his jacket pocket, returned the bag to the box, the box under the floor, the floorboard to its rightful place, and tucked the carpet back against the wall.
He got to his feet and stood silently for a moment. He took a deep breath,
exhaled slowly, and then went left to his bedroom to get a clean shirt and jacket.
Back downstairs in his makeshift study he switched on the computer and plugged his phone in. He accessed the picture he’d taken at the hospital, tried his best to sharpen the image, soften the contrast a little, and then he printed off a dozen copies. While the printer did its thing, he made coffee in the kitchen, smoked a cigarette, waited for the lithium to stabilize him.
He collected his pictures and his shoes, went back to the stolen car. He had his own vehicle parked on Teller near the corner of 169th. He pulled up on Morris at the southwest edge of the park, wiped down the wheel, the dash, the glove box, the seats, everything. He covered the outer handles, the lid of the trunk, everywhere he’d touched. He knew what he was doing, had done it a dozen times before. He left the car unlocked, walked a half block, dropped the keys down a storm drain, and hurried across the street. A day, maybe two, and the car would be gone for good—joyriders, out-and-out thieves who would strip it down to anonymity within an hour; whichever way, the car would be history before anyone from the PD realized there was another car to even look for.
It would be faster back to East Harlem. The traffic would be better. An hour, maybe an hour and a half and it would be dark. He wanted to find out who the girl was before she died. If she was still alive people would be more helpful. Once she was dead she became part of the history. It didn’t matter so much anymore. Even if they did answer up, what good was it going to do? It wasn’t going to bring her back, was it?
Madigan made two detours, the first at the precinct to give a copy of the girl’s picture to the duty uniform in Missing Persons.
“Start looking soon as you can,” he said.
“Without a name?”
Madigan shrugged. “Way it goes, my friend,” he said, and smiled.
“You know how many pictures we got back here?”
“Oh, I reckon maybe ten or fifteen, twenty at most,” Madigan replied.
“Jesus, you guys are unreal,” the uniform countered. He turned his back and disappeared.
