by R.J. Ellory
“Hey, wait up here,” Bernie started. “We’re on the same side here . . .”
“I’m on no one’s side. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care who you are. He got my daughter shot. He did business with Sandià. He cheated and lied to everyone, and he has to take responsibility now . . . He has to take responsibility for what he’s done. If you kill him, then he is off the hook . . .”
“I have no intention of killing him . . . I’m just giving him back some of the beatings that he’s given me . . .”
“Take the money,” Isabella said. “Take the money and go. Disappear. Vanish. This is the end of it for you . . .”
Bernie Tomczak looked down at Madigan. Then he looked back at Isabella Arias. There was something in her expression that told him not to take the risk. He was a gambler, had always been a gambler—but with money, never with his own life.
“I’m taking the car,” Bernie said.
“So take it,” Isabella replied.
Bernie lowered the guns. He put one in each of his jacket pockets. The keys were still in the ignition. He backed up a step toward the vehicle, and then—almost as a final thought—he kicked Madigan hard, just one more time. Madigan was stunned, winded, and he lay there on his side with nothing to breathe for thirty seconds.
“Fuck you, Vincent Madigan,” Bernie said. “I hope you rot in fucking hell.”
With that, he turned and got into the car, slammed the door, gunned the engine into life, and pulled away.
Isabella Arias stood there for a moment, listening to nothing but the sound of Madigan’s car disappearing toward the city, the sound of Madigan himself gagging and retching for breath on the sidewalk, the sound of her own heart as it thundered in her chest.
“You nearly killed my daughter,” she said.
“I—I . . .”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she interjected. “You did whatever you did. You made a mess of your life, and you made a mess of so many other peoples’ as well. You are a piece of shit. You are nothing. You are supposed to be a cop. To protect and serve. Protect your own interests, serve your own ends. That’s what you do. That’s who you are. You say you care for people. You say you want to do the right thing. Fuck you, you selfish, lying piece of shit motherfucker . . .”
Isabella Arias took one step forward and aimed the gun at Madigan’s head.
He tried to look back at her. He tried to hold her gaze. He tried to steel himself for the blaze of fire that would come from the muzzle, the sound, the impact, the silence that would follow.
This was it. This was where it ended. Killed by the very person to whom he had wished to confess.
This was justice. This was his redemption. This was the end of all of it.
“Where did you shoot my daughter?”
Vincent opened his eyes.
“Where, Vincent?”
“I didn’t shoot your daughter—”
“How do you know, Vincent? How do you know who shot her?”
“I—I d-don’t . . .”
“So where did you shoot her?”
“In her stomach,” he said. “She was shot through the side of her stomach . . .”
Isabella Arias leaned forward. She held the gun against Madigan’s gut, right there to the left of his solar plexus.
“Here?” she said. “Was it here that you shot her?”
“Isabella . . . please . . .”
“Yes or no, Vincent. Yes or no.”
He nodded, his eyes wide, his hands up in some sort of defense, the look in her eyes unrelenting, unforgiving, implacable.
“Y-yes,” he said, and he closed his eyes once more.
“Good enough,” she said matter-of-factly, and she pulled the trigger.
61
THE FIRE OF LOVE
Vincent Madigan did not bleed out.
Nearly, but not quite.
He was found by a passerby about an hour after the shooting. He was unconscious, and had he remained undiscovered for perhaps another thirty or forty minutes he would have been dead.
As it was, the ambulance got to him in time, and they shipped him on out to St. Francis Hospital, very close to the motel where he had hidden Bernie Tomczak for those few days.
It was the early hours of Monday morning, January 18th, just one week since Madigan had taken Bernie Tomczak down an alleyway off of Third and kicked him good for the money he owed Sandià. Now Sandià was dead, lying there on the floor of Madigan’s front room with a hole in his head.
Bernie Tomczak was somewhere with a hundred and twenty grand of dirty money. He had the opportunity to retrieve his phone from the glove compartment of Vincent Madigan’s car, and when he switched it on he found a message that broke his heart.
The thing came full circle, and it arrives back with Madigan.
It wasn’t until Tuesday that Madigan was capable of answering questions. Who had killed Sandià? Who had shot him and left him to die in the street? Where was his car? What had happened to Bryant? Had Sandià killed Bryant?
Officer-Involved Shooting were assigned. A Board of Review. Walsh was on it like white on rice. He came back time and again, and each time Madigan said nothing that made any sense. He did not give Bernie Tomczak’s name. He did not tell Walsh that Isabella Arias had been hiding out in his house.
After three days, Madigan was released. The bullet had missed vital organs, had passed through the side of his torso cleanly, and though a month of recuperation was advised, he could still walk; he could still do the things he needed to do. Walsh told him to stay away from the precinct, that this investigation would more than likely result in his suspension, perhaps his dismissal.
“I know you are not cooperating,” Walsh told him. “I know things happened and you know details, names, and if you don’t tell me . . .”
Madigan didn’t even respond to it. Walsh was still gun-shy, still walking on eggshells. He would never know if there was further evidence of his own complicity.
That same day, the 23rd, merely hours after being released from St. Francis, Madigan went into the 167th, ostensibly to see Callow and Harris. Apparently a social visit, nothing more, but while he was there he went in to the Evidence Room, located the box that held all of Sandià’s possessions, and from it he took the cellphone. He left the precinct a little after two in the afternoon, and he hailed a cab to take him home. He paid no mind to the gray sedan that followed him to the bridge and then turned to the right and disappeared.
On the morning of the 24th, Walsh again came to Madigan’s home. Madigan did not answer the questions, and when Walsh became agitated, implying with every statement that the situation Madigan had created was becoming all the more untenable and unrealistic, Madigan produced the cellphone he had taken from the precinct. It was this cellphone that Madigan then discussed with Walsh, and Madigan watched as Walsh visibly paled. Madigan gained Walsh’s agreement to look no further, to close the internal inquiry, to make it all disappear.
It would disappear, Walsh assured him. It would vanish, just like Bernie Tomczak.
“There is something else I need from you,” Madigan told Walsh. “There was another officer-involved shooting you looked into a little while ago. You know the one I mean, right? It is scheduled for tomorrow. You get tomorrow’s review indefinitely postponed. How you do it is of no concern to me, but I need your word that you will do it. Then, after an appropriate time, the investigation just folds quietly and is never heard of again, okay?”
Walsh said nothing.
“We understand each other, Duncan?” Madigan asked.
“Yes, Vincent, we understand each other.”
Madigan showed Walsh to the door, and he let him out and watched him cross the street to his car.
Again, Madigan was paying little attention to anything but Walsh, and thus did not notice the gray sedan at the end of the street.
Later that same day, Melissa Arias was released from East Harlem Hospital into the care of her mother, Isabella. Duncan Walsh w
as assigned to follow up on Isabella Arias, to gain her agreement for Melissa to be questioned about what she might have seen when the Sandià house was robbed. No such discussion took place, and no such agreement was made. Later, Madigan would check up on her. She had gone, left the apartment, taken Melissa out of school, vanished into some uncertain future. He thought to find her. It would have been easy—credit reports, forwarding addresses, the police database—but he did not. What was done was done. He let her go, and he wished her well. He knew that she would never consider him anything but an evil man—not now, not after what she had learned. But this he accepted. She had survived, her daughter too, and this was all that mattered.
On the morning of Thursday, February 11th, Vincent Madigan stood in the shower and let the hot water run over his face and down his back. The pain in his side had diminished markedly. He had taken nothing stronger than Vicodin for the last eight days. No Quaaludes, no Xanax, no Percocet, nothing. He had to do something, and he needed his thoughts clear, his nerves steady.
He thought often of Isabella Arias, of Bernie Tomczak, of Dario Barrantes. He thought of the morning of Tuesday, January 12th, of the robbery, the subsequent deaths of Larry Fulton, Chuck Williams and Bobby Landry. He thought of Duncan Walsh, of the cellphone that he possessed, of the hundred or so grand that Bernie had walked away with. He thought of many such things, and all of it paled into insignificance against what he now needed to do. This was something he had to do, regardless of what else might happen.
He left his house a little before nine. The previous day he had rented a car—a dark blue compact—and he drove southwest toward the bridge. The gray sedan followed him. It stayed a good half block behind, but it didn’t lose him. Whoever was inside seemed to want Madigan alone, to make sure that no one else was tailing him, that the PD, Internal Affairs, maybe even Sandià’s people, were no longer marking Vincent Madigan’s every move. It had been this way for days, ever since Madigan had been released from the hospital. But Madigan—involved in little but his own internal world—had remained unaware.
Madigan drove downtown, on past the precinct, down Second Avenue, turning right only when he reached East 96th. Here he joined Third, drove a half dozen blocks and crossed to Lexington. He pulled up on the corner, waited for a good fifteen minutes, and then made his way back across the street to a brownstone walk-up a half block back.
Madigan knocked on the door, waited patiently, and then knocked again. When he heard movement inside, he stepped back, his hands in his overcoat pockets.
Karl Benedict did not conceal his surprise.
“We need to talk,” Madigan said.
“About?”
“About the fact that your OIS review was postponed. But I am not talking to you about it in the street, Karl. Open the door, let me in, and I’ll tell you what I need from you.”
Benedict stepped back, held the door wide, and Madigan went in.
The gray sedan sat across the street a hundred and fifty yards back, and whoever was inside seemed to possess all the time in the world.
Inside Benedict’s apartment, Madigan stood in the center of the kitchen. Benedict walked to the sink and stood with his back to the window.
“I got your review postponed,” Madigan said.
Benedict didn’t reply.
“I got it postponed indefinitely, and I can get it canceled.”
Benedict frowned. “Wha—”
“Seven thousand dollars,” Madigan said.
“You what?”
“Give me seven thousand dollars, Karl, and the whole thing goes away.”
“Seven thousand dollars.”
“Yeah, seven thousand dollars. Not a dollar more or less. Give me that now and I walk away, your review never happens, and whatever you’re so scared about them finding out isn’t a problem anymore.”
“And how do I know . . .”
“What? That I can do it? Well, you don’t know how I got last week’s review postponed, but I did. It’s that simple. Your review never happened, and will never happen if you give me seven thousand dollars.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
“I have your word?”
“You have my word.”
“I’ll get a jacket,” Benedict said. “We’ll go to the bank now.”
Madigan waited while Benedict got his jacket. He felt calm, levelheaded. This was it. This was what he’d needed to do all along. This was maybe the most important thing he had ever done.
Benedict was with him inside two minutes, had his car keys, said simply that Madigan should follow him; it was no more than a half dozen blocks.
They left the house together. Benedict led the way, Madigan followed. Twice he had to ask Benedict not to walk so fast. Painkillers aside, his body hurt a great deal. They drove off, Benedict ahead, and then pulled up at the corner of East 95th and Third. Benedict got out, walked back to meet Madigan. Madigan lowered the window.
“Five minutes,” Benedict said.
Madigan nodded, raised the window once more.
He put on the radio. Tom Waits. “Lord I’ve Been Changed.”
Madigan smiled at the irony, but did not believe it for a moment.
He smoked a cigarette, lit a second from the stub of the first, and then Benedict was leaving the bank and crossing the sidewalk to meet him.
Benedict walked around and got in the passenger side. He produced a brown envelope from inside his jacket. It was a good inch thick.
“Seven grand,” he said.
Madigan took the envelope.
“We’re all done, right?”
“All done,” Madigan replied.
“I never hear another word about this.”
“Not a single word,” Madigan replied.
“Okay, then.”
Benedict reached for the door lever, lifted it, got out. He walked back to his own car, reversed a couple of yards, and then turned into the flow of traffic and disappeared.
Madigan finished his cigarette, started the engine, drove away.
The gray sedan followed.
All the way back to the Bronx, and then—on the corner of 169th and Findlay—Madigan pulled over again and got out of the car. He crossed the street to a plain-looking house three or four down from the end of the street.
He knocked on the door, waited, and when a middle-aged woman opened the door they shared a few words. The woman smiled, seemed pleased to see him and let him in.
Madigan was in the house no more than ten minutes. When he reappeared he held a bundle of papers and a set of keys. He walked around the side of the house, and a moment later he pulled out of the lot in a metallic blue 4x4. A Hyundai perhaps, the driver of the gray sedan thought. It was small for a 4x4, like a mom’s car, something for dropping the kids off to school, picking them up again, fetching the groceries.
Madigan’s rental stayed on the street, the sedan followed the 4x4 back downtown, back over the bridge, and then on toward the Village. The driver of the sedan did not know where Madigan was going, and did not care. All he wished to know was that there was no one following him—no cops, no IA, no one but himself.
This was the end of it all. The end of the lies, the bullshit, the end of everything.
They drove for a good half hour, and then Madigan was slowing, drawing to a stop on the sidewalk.
He got out of the 4x4, walked back across the street, and came around the corner to an apartment building.
Why he hadn’t stopped directly ahead of the building was unknown.
Madigan knocked on the door. Within seconds a woman answered. They shared a few words. The woman seemed surprised. She disappeared back into the house and returned again, this time with a teenager—dark-haired, pretty.
Bernie Tomczak got out of the sedan as Madigan and the teenager started walking back toward the 4x4. He came around the corner just as Cassie Madigan started screaming at the top of her voice. Bernie stepped back out of sight, watched them together.
�
��I don’t believe it!” Cassie shouted. “Oh my God! Oh my God! No way! Jesus Christ . . . Dad! Oh my God, a car!”
Madigan held out his arms. He closed Cassie inside.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” he said.
Madigan closed his eyes. He was tired. So damned tired.
There were other people to see—Ivonne and Adam, Catherine, Lucy, and Tom too. There were things that needed to be said. Things that needed to be worked out.
But for now there was just his daughter, the feeling of her right up close against him, and the words she said that navigated the circuitous path to his dark and broken heart.
“I love you, Dad . . . You know that, right?”
“I know, sweetheart. I know.”
“Don’t ever forget that, okay?” She looked up at him—wide-eyed, her mascara smeared awkwardly like bruises. “You promise me now.”
“Yes,” Vincent Madigan said. “I promise.”
And this time—perhaps for the first time in as long as he could remember—there was no word of a lie.
“I have to get Mom,” she said excitedly. “I have to show Mom . . .”
Madigan released her, watched as she ran back to the house, calling after her mom, telling her mom to come see what her dad had bought her for her birthday.
Madigan believed he had never felt anything so real in his life.
He looked back toward the car, and then he turned.
Bernie had a gun in one hand, his cellphone in the other. The gun was aimed directly at Madigan.
“You wanna hear his voice, Vincent? You wanna hear what my brother sounded like while he died in that fucking house?”
It all came back. All the shit he had done came back, and now here he was.
“I am sorry,” Madigan said.
“Sometimes that’s just too fucking late,” Bernie replied.
Cassie Madigan heard the gunshot from the kitchen.
Also by R.J. Ellory
Novels
Candlemoth
Ghostheart
A Quiet Vendetta
