A Dark and Broken Heart

by R.J. Ellory

  But Madigan had.

  Madigan had not only considered it, he had planned it, executed it, had murdered seven people—four in the house, three in the storage unit—and was now sitting on Sandià’s money.

  There was a way out of it. It was simple enough. Put the money in someone’s possession. Alert Sandià. Sandià’s people make a visit. They interrogate the guy. He denies any involvement. He keeps on denying any involvement until the money is found, and then it’s all over. Madigan’s debt is wiped clean, the case is closed, Sandià is happy. Madigan walks away a hero on both sides, and then . . . Then he would still have to handle the lawyers, pay the alimony, and get himself the hell out of this situation. It was not tenable. It was not a good way to live. Too much stress. Too much thinking.

  Arriving at the 167th, there was a message at the desk for Madigan. Bryant needed him, and needed him now.

  Bryant was an anchor in a storm of madness. Bryant was a decent man, a good squad sergeant, and he had always expected great things of Madigan. Madigan delivered, for the most part. And if Bryant possessed any suspicion that Madigan was not on the up-and-up, he didn’t raise it. Bryant knew how hard it was to find a good homicide detective. Had he known how deep Madigan had gone, how out in left field Madigan really was, Bryant would act, and act swiftly. They had a tight relationship, but they were not social friends. Ultimately, it was always business with Bryant. He kept his private life and his work very clearly delineated, and he expected his crew to respect that decision.

  Madigan went on up, stood in the corridor for a moment. He straightened his jacket, cleaned off the toes of his shoes on the backs of his pants, took a couple of deep breaths, and knocked on the door.

  “Come!” Bryant hollered.

  Madigan opened the door, stepped into the office, and not until he was closing the door behind him did he see Duncan Walsh seated across from Bryant.

  What the hell was this?

  “Vincent . . . Good, come in,” Bryant said, and he rose from his chair and came around the desk.

  Walsh acknowledged Madigan with a dry smile. Walsh was always matter-of-fact, always businesslike. The man lacked humor. The man was IA.

  “Vincent,” Bryant said. “Very simply put, we have a situation—”

  Madigan didn’t move. He felt the color draining from his face. The mess of nerves in the base of his guts was tightening furiously. He felt his muscles cramping. His mouth was dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  “Vincent?” Bryant asked.

  Walsh turned to look at him, frowned.

  “You okay, Vincent?”

  Madigan nodded. “I think I have a bit of food poisoning . . .” he said, and held his right hand to his stomach.

  “You okay to be in today?” Bryant asked. “You need to go get something for it?”

  Madigan shook his head. “Just some water . . . I’ll go get some from the machine . . .”

  Walsh got up. “Hey, sit here, Vincent,” he said. “Take it easy. I’ll get the water.”

  Madigan watched him leave the room, took the man’s chair, waited in silence until Walsh appeared with a bottle of Evian.

  Madigan drank thirstily, most of the bottle, and then he sat back and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply, tried to let it go, tried to think nothing, to feel nothing, to let it all slide away. If this is it, then so be it.

  “We can do this another time, if you want,” Walsh said.

  Madigan opened his eyes, looked at the man—perhaps for the very first time—and the expression on his face seemed to be one of genuine concern.

  Madigan raised his hand. “It’s okay. Let’s get it over with.”

  Walsh frowned again, shook his head, and then turned back to Bryant.

  “You sure you’re okay, Vincent?” Bryant asked.

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll be fine . . .”

  Bryant sat down. Walsh took a chair from behind the door and sat beside Madigan.

  Madigan tightened his grip on the bottle. He was waiting for the opening salvo. He was waiting for them to ask for his gun and his badge.

  “We have a situation here, Vincent,” Bryant said. “Not only to do with the thing that happened in the house that you’re working on, but also a triple homicide in a storage unit out near East 109th . . .”

  Madigan felt a drop of cool sweat running from the nape of his neck down to the middle of his spine. He believed he would start hyperventilating. Any moment now. That, or maybe he would just puke. They would drug test him. Ordinarily he got a tipoff on the drug test and he stayed off of anything for a week or two. But this? This was different. This was something for Vincent and Vincent alone.

  Fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck . . .

  He started to think about Cassie, about the car he’d planned to buy her for her eighteenth. He thought about Sandià’s nephew, the one face he remembered from the turkey shoot at the house.

  And then he thought about the kid at the hospital, who she was and how she was connected to Sandià, where her parents were and what the hell she’d been doing in that place . . .

  “Last night,” Bryant said, “we got the three DBs in this storage unit. I asked Walsh to go out there on secure until Ron Callow could make it over there, and we figured it for nothing but a heist gone wrong, maybe some inter-crew rip off. Who the hell knows, eh?” Bryant got up and walked to the window. “But then Walsh picked up on something.” He paused, as if for effect. He looked at Madigan. Madigan’s heart was a runaway horse.

  This is it this is it this is it . . . What have I done? Jesus Christ . . . What the hell have I done . . .?

  Madigan could see an interrogation room, a team of suits from IA, a courtroom, a jail cell . . .

  “There was a tread mark through the blood, and that tread mark could only have come after the shooting.”

  Madigan’s thoughts stopped dead.

  “I expedited the report, and Forensics have confirmed that the tread mark through the blood in the storage unit does not match the tread on the van that was left behind. Additionally—and this caught both of us unawares—there were blood smears in the back of that van that match the vics at the house you’re working on.”

  Madigan felt his eyes had widened to twice their size.

  “So it seems the robbery at the Sandià house from yesterday morning is the same case as the three DBs in the storage unit.”

  Madigan tried to look surprised. He drank some more water. Without it he didn’t think he’d be able to speak. “So the three dead guys in the storage unit were the ones that hit the house?”

  Bryant nodded. “Seems that way, except we don’t think it was three guys.”

  “It was four,” Walsh interjected. “That’s the premise we’re working on, due to the simple fact that someone drove out of that storage unit after the shooting was over.”

  Oh, you dumb dumb dumb son of a bitch . . . What the hell were you thinking? Why the hell didn’t you trust your instinct? Why didn’t you go back and check over everything again?

  Bryant sat down again, leaned forward with his fingers steepled together. “You get anywhere on this little girl?”

  “On it again today,” Madigan said. The words came with difficulty. He drank the last of the water. “Nothing as yet, but I don’t think it’ll be too long before we track her down.”

  “We need that ID,” Bryant went on. “Maybe that’s not related to the robbery, but I sure as hell would like to know what she was doing in that house.”

  “So where to now?” Madigan asked.

  “Walsh here is gonna work on the storage unit DBs—”

  “What?” Madigan asked. “You’re IA. What the hell are you doing on a homicide?”

  Bryant raised his hand to silence Madigan. “Walsh here did eighteen months in Homicide. He knows the ropes. He’s got some breathing space, okay?” Bryant smiled wryly. “And we sure as hell would prefer Detective Walsh here to be sticking his nose into a triple homicide than anything else. Right, Vincent?�
�

  Madigan hesitated, and then he smiled suddenly. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Sure thing.”

  “So this is what we’re doing,” Bryant went. “You run the case as it is. You work on the house, the ID of the little girl, all that that entails. Walsh here is going to work on the three DBs and finding that second vehicle. You are working the same case, essentially, but I don’t want you partnered. Partnered is not going to work. You coordinate with each other, but you do that through me. I ain’t getting shot from guns for letting Walsh here run a Homicide case. But with Callow away, I sure as hell can use the extra pair of hands. You get the girl and Walsh goes after the fourth man. That’s the way I want it.”

  “If it’s the same case why don’t I just run it as one?” Madigan asked, doing everything he could to disguise the utter disbelief and horror that he felt.

  “No, you have enough on your plate,” Bryant said. “I’ve gone over this with Walsh, and this is the best way to work it. This is seven homicides, a little girl up in Harlem Hospital who might just be the eighth, and I need this off the books as fast as possible. I figure that, despite the inevitable differences of opinion, you pair might be able to work together, don’tcha think?”

  Madigan said nothing.

  “Not a problem for me,” Walsh said. “You okay with this, Vincent?”

  Madigan nodded. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Won’t be any problem at all.”

  23

  IDIOT WALTZ

  Laurence Fulton is dead. He lies on a mortician’s slab somewhere. His skin is cold and blue and his limbs are stiff, and his heart is like a clenched fist of dead muscle and I left tire tracks in that storage unit and someone is peering at them and trying to figure it all out . . .

  And I am a dumb, dumb, dumb son of a bitch.

  And I have Sandià’s money and a bunch of unlicensed and unregistered weapons, and a crapload of ammo and drugs right there under my floorboards.

  Most often I am staggered by the stupidity of others.

  Right now I am stunned breathless by my own.

  I stand at my desk, and then I sit down. Harris is somewhere. I can hear him talking to someone about something. Outside Bryant’s office Walsh said it was good to be back on a real case. He walked with me to the stairwell, and then he said he’d forgotten to tell Bryant something and he turned around and went back.

  I tried to be nonchalant. I tried to act like a man who had nothing to hide. I tried to act like a normal person, but for the life of me I don’t even remember what a normal person is.

  It was a good fifteen minutes before I could even feel my heart and my pulse, and they were still going ten to the dozen. I was ready to piss myself. I was ready to just piss myself and cry like a brokenhearted schoolgirl.

  If I ever had nine lives, I just lost eight of them.

  In too deep to get out now. In so deep the only way out is through the other side.

  I feel like a crazy man. Maybe I am a crazy man. Maybe all the crazies think they’re not, and they think that everything they’re doing possesses the greatest reason and rationale. Isn’t that the case with psychos and sociopaths and serial killers? They got it all figured out. They know what they’re doing. They’re the only ones who really understand the truth.

  Am I any different?

  Yes, I must be. I must be because I doubt myself, because I question myself, because I take time out to try and calculate the odds.

  And right now? Right now the odds are stacked against me. Seriously stacked.

  Jesus Christ Almighty.

  I head outside for a smoke. I stand in the parking lot behind the precinct. My hands are shaking. I need a drink. I need a couple of lithium. I need something.

  What I don’t need is Duncan Walsh looking for the fourth man. A man that is not supposed to even exist. But he does, and that man is me. That’s the truth. But truth is relative. And they won’t find the second car, and they won’t find my bloodstained shoes, so what have they really got? They’ve got the house and the storage unit linked. They think there’s a fourth man, but they can’t prove it. They have a partial tread from a stolen car, and that car could never be traced back to me. They have ballistics reports on all the weapons that were used, both at the house and at the storage unit and none of those weapons carry my prints. Aside from what I scattered on the floor of the storage unit, I have all the money, and none of it has gone into circulation. Put that money in someone’s house and they’re screwed.

  It’s the only way. The only, only, only way.

  I have to ID the girl, and I have to find myself a fall guy.

  And then we’re done.

  I smoke another cigarette. The tension in my chest eases fractionally.

  I can do this. I am Vincent Madigan. I can sell two different lies out of separate corners of my mouth at the same damned time.

  If anyone can pull this off, it’s me.

  And then it’s finished. I’m up at the big show. I’m right there on the plate. Strike out and it’s all over, but one home run and we’re done. Change the job, change the city, take whatever money I can find and go.

  But first the girl . . .

  24

  CRY TO ME

  Late morning. The streets and houses and faces and words are all the same. We saw nothing. We know nothing. We don’t want to know anything. This is not our problem. Leave us alone.

  Madigan knew this routine all too well. You don’t spend any time at all in inner-city Homicide without knowing the enervating frustration of canvassing for eyewitnesses.

  He tried to forget about Walsh. He tried to tell himself that he had covered all bases, that there was nothing in the storage unit, nothing in the personal residences of Fulton, Landry, or Williams that would place him and them together. Even if they found the warehousing unit, he had been careful with every bottle, every cigarette butt, every piece of paper. The only thing he could not predict were the words that might have been shared with friends, associates, bar buddies. And whether any of them had written anything down. Something on a scrap of paper. Madigan’s name, even his first name, a phone kiosk number he had given to call him at a particular time. There was no way in the world to predict what may or may not be among their personal effects, and to try and guess would drive him crazy. Better to think of nothing at all. Better to empty his mind of all considerations, and just take each day, each hour as it came. To do anything but strenuously pursue the identification of the girl would be foolish. He had to appear professional, focused, in the game. Walsh would work on the DBs, the storage unit, the Econoline. Madigan would give Sandià the irreducible minimum of information, and coordinate everything regarding Walsh through Bryant. It was a small circle, a tight circle, and he centered it. He needed three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision, and he needed it all the time. He was going to have to keep off the pills, keep the booze at a manageable level, try and get some sleep. Eat properly. All that shit.

  Madigan was back in the car just before eleven. A minute or two to smoke a cigarette, just get himself settled before he started down some other street, listening to the same kind of losers bullshit the same kinds of stories.

  It was then that he looked in the rearview. Tilted it to see himself dead square.

  He looked older than his age. His hair was edging into gray at the temples. The shadows beneath his eyes were now becoming permanent. He carried that worn-out look, ragged and frayed and wearing thin at the edges. Lost was the man that his wives had married, the man that had attracted the mistresses. He was an advertisement for how to do most everything the wrong way. But he would never apologize. Not to himself. What the hell use was that? And he didn’t need redemption or salvation or absolution or forgiveness. What had he read one time? If I forgive you, that’s me saying you can just go ahead and hurt me again and I’ll do nothing. No, he didn’t need forgiveness from anyone. He wasn’t here to argue for his own defense. He was here just to make the bullshit go away. That’s all he needed to do right now. Just ma
ke the bullshit go away.

  He rooted around in the glove box. He found a baggie with a couple of Xanax. They chilled him right down when he’d done too much coke. He broke one in half and raised it to his lips. He remembered the taste of them. Hell, these pharmaceutical guys were so damned smart, how come they couldn’t make these things taste like Reese’s or M&M’s or something? He closed his eyes for just a second, and then he lowered the window and dropped the tablet into the gutter. If he was going to try and keep it together, then he should start right now.

  Madigan left the car, the pictures of the girl in his hand, and he started up another street.

  Three doors in he got a rise.

  It was a hesitation, would’ve gone right by him had he not been looking directly at the girl when she saw the picture.

  The girl was twenty-five, maybe thirty. She had that spiritual beat-to-shit look that they all had down here, the ever-present certainty that however hard they fought there was never really such a thing as escape. They were all defined by the past, and they tried so hard to forget it. The Russians had a saying: Keep an eye on the past and you’ll see the future half-blind; forget the past and you’ll be blind altogether. They went at it blind, and they went at it angrily, and blind anger had a way of undoing pretty much everything in a bad way.