by R.J. Ellory
Walsh took a left after Thomas Jefferson Park and headed down the incline into the parking garage beneath the precinct. There was no reason to feel anything as he walked from his car to the elevator, and yet he did. An uncharacteristic anxiety had settled somewhere in his lower gut, and as he rode up the two levels to his floor he could see little but the scene that had confronted him in the storage unit.
Something hadn’t made sense. He wondered who had been robbed, and how much had been taken. He wondered about the identity of the three dead men, the way in which that final scene had played out. He tried to imagine how they must have felt—believing that whatever they’d done had been a resounding success, that here was the money they needed, a way out, an escape route, and yet swiftly understanding that this was the point at which it would all end.
The elevator doors opened. Walsh hesitated outside his office door. He had the digital camera in his hand. Why had he taken those pictures? It was not his case, not his crime scene, and why had he asked the Unit First to info him on the treads and ballistics?
This was not the way to go. He was not about to turn back. Robbery-Homicide was not where he wanted to be. IA was swimming against the current for sure, but IA was a means to an end. The destination was the thing, not the journey.
Walsh sat down and switched on the camera. One by one he deleted the images from the memory, and then put the camera in the desk drawer.
That was the end of the matter, and there was nothing more to be considered.
15
ETERNITY IS HERE
Courage is not what you believe it to be. Courage is misconceived.
Everyone wants to survive. No one wants to die. I think courage—more often than not—comes out of a certainty that you are screwed anyway. Sort of dead if you do, dead if you don’t. Like a nothing-to-lose proposition.
I don’t believe anyone is really courageous. At least not naturally. People are scared. They don’t want to die. Even the crazies, the out-and-out psychos. They get scared too when they know it’s coming.
Seen two executions. Both lethal injections. Didn’t sleep for days afterward. Didn’t dare. Those men sobbed. I mean really sobbed. They were all attitude until the moment they knew it wasn’t a game, it wasn’t a dream, and they weren’t going any other way than a deep hole in the bottom of hell. Because that’s where they belonged, both of them, and no doubt about it. And still they sobbed like little girls.
I’ve had guns in my face. I’ve been shot at. I’ve had big people come at me with baseball bats and knives and sticks and broken bottles and one time a chainsaw that had already cut someone’s arm off at the shoulder.
I was scared. Damned straight.
But not scared like now.
This moment.
Crossing the threshold, passing out of the hallway and into the room where Sandià waits patiently for me.
“Get me Madigan,” he told someone, and the someone made a call, and Sandià never thought for a second that I would do anything but come a-running.
Does he want me because he knows? Or does he want me because he doesn’t know?
If he knows, well, I am dead. No question about it. “You killed four of my people,” he will say. He will shake his head. He will look away for a moment, and then he will turn back to me and smile philosophically. I will see that expression, the one I have seen so many times before. A sense of regretful reconciliation, as if he has appreciated now that there is nothing more that can be done. Like Pontius Pilate. Even if he felt something different, there would be nothing he could do. The decision has been made. It has now been washed out of his hands.
I am sad. Not for me. Not for the hopelessness of my situation. I am sad simply because it has come to an end. I am forty-two years old. It has all been and gone in the blink of an eye. What did I expect? What kind of life did I believe I would have? Only thing I know for sure is that it was something other than this. Of that I am certain.
I have a feeling in my chest. Someone has gripped my heart and they are squeezing it hollow. The constriction spreads to my lungs, my throat, even my nose. I am finding it hard to breathe. The walls seem tissue thin. If I touch them they will move.
I think of the girl who OD’d three weeks before. I think of how my life has become as meaningless as hers.
I think of Landry and Williams and Fulton. I wonder if anyone has discovered their bodies yet. I wonder if Crime Scene are—even now—taking pictures, putting two and two together, and I try to imagine what I would do if I were assigned to the investigation. I should have gone farther. I should have chosen a storage unit out of jurisdiction. I should have gone back and checked and double-checked that there was nothing to tie me to the scene in that building.
I should have done a lot of things.
This is it now.
This is the moment.
Like that child killer on the table when they stuck those IVs in his arms and he knew the sodium thiopental and the pancuronium bromide was on its merry way.
“So this is it?” he asked, and he looked through the glass right at me. “Eternity is here.”
16
DAY TURN TO NIGHT
“Such things as this are neither forgiven nor forgotten,” Sandià said. “It is never an issue of how or why, but simply a matter of who. That’s all I need to know, Vincent. Who did this thing?”
Sandià stood near the window, his left hand in his jacket pocket, his right holding back the curtain. He was looking down into the street below, had been doing so when Madigan had entered the room, had not even glanced in his direction.
The escort had left. Madigan stayed as close to the door as he could, believing that if he narrowed the distance between himself and Sandià then Sandià would hear Madigan’s heart beating.
“Who did this thing?” Sandià repeated. He shook his head slowly.
Was Sandià playing games? Did he know it was him? Was he giving Madigan a chance to come clean, to admit his own guilt and thus lessen the penalty?
I gave you a chance, Vincent. I gave you as good a chance as I could. I was hoping you’d speak, that you’d say something, that you’d tell me what happened and why and how you were sorry. But no, you didn’t say a thing. You have disappointed me, Vincent. Seriously disappointed me. I believed we were friends, that all the years behind us counted for something. Evidently not. Hell, Vincent, I don’t want to do this to you, but now I have no choice . . .
“My sister’s boy,” Sandià said. “They killed my sister’s boy.” He stepped away from the window. “Four of them . . .” He shook his head, waved his hand in a dismissive fashion. “The other three . . . The other three were bad enough, but my sister’s boy?”
Madigan swallowed the knot in his throat. It was the size of a baseball.
That was the one he’d recognized as the stretcher had been taken out. That was the one whose face seemed so familiar. Sandià’s nephew. Hell, could it get any worse?
“Come,” Sandià said, and he waved his hand toward Madigan. “Come sit with me, Vincent.”
Madigan took a step away from the door. He was trying so hard to read Sandià, to see what was in his eyes, in his thoughts, but Sandià had never been an easy man to predict. That’s what made him good. That’s what made him successful. No one ever knew what Sandià would do next, and that edge of unpredictability gave him leverage.
From the dresser against the wall Sandià took a bottle of scotch and two glasses. He two-inched each glass, held one out to Madigan. Madigan could delay no further. He walked forward, accepted it, took a seat facing Sandià. Sandià sat down, held the glass against his cheek for a moment, and then sipped. He closed his eyes as he swallowed.
Madigan drank too. For a moment he believed he would cough as the heat of the spirit invaded his throat, but he quelled the sensation. He willed his heart to slow down. He willed himself to look directly at Sandià and show nothing of what was occurring in his thoughts.
“I am disappointed,” Sandià sta
rted, and Madigan knew this was it.
I gave you a chance, Vincent.
He could feel the cool glass in his hand, felt the tension in the muscles of each finger.
“I am disappointed in people—”
I was hoping you’d speak, that you’d say something . . .
And as his grip increased he wondered if the glass would shatter right there.
“Disappointed that they take me for such a fool—”
Hell, Vincent, I don’t want to do this to you, but now I have no choice . . .
“That there are people who honestly believe they can do such a thing as this and . . .” Sandià shook his head resignedly once again. “That they think I won’t find out. That they think I won’t discover the truth of what happened, who they are . . . that I will just let it go.”
Sandià closed his eyes. He held the glass to his lips but did not drink.
Madigan started to wonder if he’d been wrong, if he had misjudged the situation.
Sandià looked at him closely. “Are you all right, Vincent?”
Madigan nodded, almost involuntarily.
“You seem pale. Are you not well?”
“I—I’m okay, sure.”
“This has upset you too, I imagine?”
Madigan frowned.
“You knew him, didn’t you? My nephew.”
Madigan tried to show nothing on his face. He cast his mind back, the moment he and Fulton and Landry and Williams came through that upper window, the guy at the top of the stairs, the guy with the money. What was his name? What was his—
And then it came to him.
“Alex.”
Sandià nodded slowly. “You saw him? At the house today?”
Madigan’s heart missed a beat. The bottom dropped out of his stomach. “Saw him?”
Sandià smiled knowingly. “You think I was unaware of your involvement, Vincent?”
Madigan’s eyes widened. It was as if the glass in his hand literally bent with the pressure of his grip.
“That you had been assigned to investigate this? You think I didn’t know?” Sandià rose from his chair and walked once again to the window. “You forget how many friends I have, eh?”
Madigan wanted to scream. He wanted to run from the room, his heart bursting from his chest, his mouth wide, his eyes bright with terror and desperation. He had never felt anything like this before. He never wanted to feel anything like this again.
Madigan opened his mouth to speak. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. Even as the whiskey crossed his lips he knew that he had missed the inevitability of his own death by nothing less than seconds.
“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes I forget.”
“Well, if there was ever a choice, Vincent, then you know I would choose you.”
Sandià returned to his desk and sat down. “Tell me what you saw, Vincent . . . Tell me exactly what you saw.”
Madigan shifted uneasily. “It was a massacre,” he said. “They had no chance. Whoever did this came in through the upper window. They waited until the escort had arrived at the head of the stairwell, and then they came through. There were three, perhaps more. We are still trying to work out exactly how it occurred.”
Sandià then dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand, as if, in hearing it, he realized that he did not want to hear it after all. “How is of no concern to me, Vincent. Neither how nor why, but who. This is all I need to know. Who did this thing? I do not care for the money. It is of no significance. Regardless, the money is no use to whoever took it. Start spending that money and they’ll get no farther than the next 7-Eleven—”
“No use?” Madigan asked.
Sandià smiled dryly. The expression in his eyes was one of superiority. “Marked,” he said.
“I’m sorry . . .”
“The money. It was marked. All of it.”
Madigan’s heart stopped. He heard it stop. It was like the sound of a car hitting a wall.
“So, understanding that whoever took it will probably wait a while before they start throwing it around, I need you to help me.”
“Of course,” Madigan said. The words, just two of them, were like mouthfuls of dry dust. He felt disoriented, elsewhere. Had this all now been for nothing? Marked money? How the hell could it be marked? This did not make sense.
“There is also the matter of the girl.”
“Yes,” Madigan replied. “The girl.”
“I was given a responsibility, Vincent, a responsibility to care for this child. I was taking care of this child for a very good reason, and now she is in the hospital, and from what I understand there is a good possibility that she may not survive.” Sandià took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “If the child dies . . . Well, Vincent, if the child dies I will be very unhappy, not only because it is never good to see the death of a child, but because I will have failed in my duty in this matter. You understand?”
“Yes, of course.”
“So I need your help here as well.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to work on this case diligently and with all speed, Vincent. I need you to find out who did this thing, and before you make any arrest I need you to tell me who these people are, and where they are hiding.”
Madigan said nothing.
“Second, I need you to keep this girl safe. I need her to live, Vincent. I don’t know how much more I can stress this. I need the girl to live. I need her to make it through this.”
“Can you tell me her name?” Madigan asked. “We still have been unable to identify her.”
Once again Sandià waved his hand in a dismissive fashion. “Her name is unimportant. Who she is and where she came from are unimportant matters. I just need you to ensure that no further harm comes to her—”
Madigan sipped his whiskey. The tension in his chest had become an intense nausea. His eyes felt too large for the sockets. His tongue was like a rough stone in the dry pit of his mouth.
“And my gratitude will not go unrewarded, Vincent,” Sandià added. “You have a far better memory than me,” he went on. “How much do you owe to these gambling people of mine?”
“Seventy-five,” Madigan said. “Seventy-five thousand.”
“You do these things for me, Vincent, you tell me who these people are and where they have run to, and you do all you can to make sure the girl comes out alive, and we are even. The debt is wiped from the slate.”
Madigan sighed. He tried to smile. “That is very generous—”
Sandià rose from the chair and walked toward the dresser. He lifted the bottle of scotch from the tray. “You know me as well as anyone, Vincent. My generosity is matched only by my anger. The people that did this thing . . . Well, let us say no more, eh? Have another drink with me, and then you must go and take care of these matters.”
“Yes,” Madigan said, and he held out his glass for Sandià to refill it.
17
JACK ON FIRE
I am sick for nearly an hour.
I retch and heave and gag until everything in my body is gone, and then I retch and heave and gag until the blood vessels in my eyes are ready to burst.
I am in the washroom in some bar. I have locked myself in a cubicle, and three times someone has called out, “You okay in there, buddy?” “Hey . . . you all right?”
“Okay,” I have replied through a mouthful of saliva, my nose blocked, my eyes stinging, my breath coming short and fast and shallow.
I got in the car and drove away from Sandià’s place. I kept on driving, ended up somewhere near the park, somewhere between the museum and Mount Sinai. I pulled over. I remember crying, crying like those guys in the chamber when the needles went in. Crying like a bitch. Jesus. Jesus Christ Almighty. I don’t know what the hell I am doing. Sometimes I wonder if I am even awake. Is this a dream? Is this just some sick, deranged nightmare, and I am going to wake up and find myself in bed next to Angela or Ivonne or Catherine? Or maybe I’m still a kid, and th
is is some kind of surreal premonition about what will happen to me if I take this path . . .
But it is none of these things. I know this.
Sandià needs my help. He wants to know the identity of the people who robbed his money and killed Alex, his nephew. I remember when I last saw Alex. He seemed like a good guy. He worked for his uncle, as all Sandià’s nephews did, but he didn’t have that arrogant bullshit attitude that so many of them assumed. They assumed it because they were related to Sandià, and because they were related they could get away with it. But Alex didn’t have that thing going on. He seemed out of place, a fish out of water, and yet that had been all of six months before, and Alex was still working for his uncle. He’d been there today. The courier. And now he was dead. So were the three others, and so were Fulton, Landry and Williams. And there was only one person left alive, and only one person who really knew the truth of what had taken place, and that was me. Madigan. Vincent Madigan. Jesus Christ.
And what had Sandià meant about the money being marked? What did that mean? Marked by who? Surely not Sandià. Was it already stolen? Had that money come from a bank robbery? Was it all recorded, every serial number noted somewhere, ready to flash up on some government screen somewhere as soon as it passed hands at a till someplace? Or was it an offhand comment? Did it mean nothing at all? Was he speaking figuratively?
Christ, it didn’t even matter now. He had stolen Sandià’s money to pay his own gambling debts to Sandià. And now? Hell, Sandià himself was going to wipe the very same debt! Was that the greatest freaking irony, or what? Find out who did it, let him know before an official report or arrest was made, and the debt would disappear! Jesus Christ! I’ll call him now. “Hey, I got a name for you. I’m right here, my friend. Right here! Come get me and we’re all quits. I’ll even tell you where the money is, okay? It’s in a bag under the goddamned floorboards on my landing!”
