I held my tongue.
“Talk to me,” Mercer said. “Talk to me if you want to go home tonight.”
“You ain’t got shit.”
“Maybe you don’t watch enough cop shows, Cormac,” Mercer said. “Trace evidence, it’s called. That sheet you went back into the fort to get? There’ll be DNA in the sweat that’s on it, and skin cells that come off just from rubbing against it. The plastic handcuff, too.”
“Come back when you can prove it.”
Mercer asked him four more questions, but he refused to answer any of them.
“Let’s talk to Fitzgerald again,” Mercer said, stepping onto the dock. “I don’t think he’s going to take a fall for his buddy.”
I waited until Mercer’s back was to me, then I bent down and removed one of my socks. I pushed Cormac Lonigan down onto the toilet seat, shoved the sock in his mouth, and secured it by tying my handkerchief around his face. Then I slammed the cover of the bench.
Mercer was already face-to-face with Pete Fitzgerald and asking questions by the time I came up behind him.
“Three years, maybe four,” Fitzgerald said. “I haven’t known him more than that.”
“Been to his house?” Mercer asked. “Know his parents or any of his family?”
“Never been there, no. We’ve been on jobs together like this from time to time. And we have some beers after work. That’s all.”
I was hanging back but ready to jump in and make answers happen.
“What does the name Renner mean to you?” Mercer asked with a steadiness in his voice that I envied.
“Relatives of Cormac’s on his mother’s side. I don’t know them.”
Fitzgerald was obviously used to talking with his hands, but one was firmly tethered to the metal fence and the other seemed tongue-tied without its mate.
“Ever heard of them?” Mercer asked.
“Seems everybody has. My family’s out of Hell’s Kitchen, too.”
“Any relatives of yours ever call themselves Westies?”
“Went out of their way not to do, Detective. Good people, my folks. Hardworking people.”
“You ever been locked up?”
“No way.”
The onset of the dusk of evening helped the interrogation. Manhattan Island looked a million miles away.
“Accessory to murder,” Mercer said, “is a very rough way to start.”
I don’t know who was rocked more by the sound of the word murder—the kid or me. It took me a few seconds to realize it was Mercer’s bluff to move Pete Fitzgerald in the right direction.
“I don’t know anything about a murder, Detective,” Fitzgerald said, tugging at the fencing as he tried to plead with Mercer.
“He claims you do,” I said, interrupting Mercer when he least needed me to do it. “Cormac Lonigan says you do.”
“I don’t believe he’s talking,” Fitzgerald said, shaking his head from side to side. “He wouldn’t talk to me; he sure ain’t talking to you.”
“I know his uncle,” I said, lowering my voice. “I know his uncle Emmet.”
Fitzgerald was breathing heavily, obviously confused about whom to trust.
“And I know his uncle Emmet is back in town.”
His eyes were jumping back and forth between Mercer and me like Mexican beans.
“You met Emmet yet?”
“No,” he said, his head still shaking.
“So what do you have now?” I asked. “Ten toes? Ten fingers? Count ’em good, kid, ’cause we let you go back on the ferry but we hold on to Cormac, and then I put the word out in the hood that we’ve been talking to you, you might be a few digits short come Sunday.”
“I never met Emmet. I swear to you.”
I backed off and turned to Jimmy. “We’ll hold on to Lonigan,” I said. “You get a head start out to Woodside right now. Pick a bar. Find Donahue’s.”
There was a Donahue’s in every Irish neighborhood. There must be one in Woodside.
“Have a few drinks on me. Throw Emmet Renner’s name around,” I said. “Then ask for Pete Fitzgerald. Tell them last time you saw him he was at the ferry pier downtown, talking to a bunch of cops. Then about eleven P.M., I’ll come in with him, and by then—”
“Why would you do this to me? I don’t know about any murder.”
I moved in on Fitzgerald again. He smelled of fear.
“You might as well talk to me.”
“I’ll be a dead man anyway,” he said. “Why should I talk?”
“Because if you tell us how to find Renner—and his victim—we can pick him up before you get home. If he’s not hiding out on this island, then there’s no reason for anyone to connect his problems to you.”
Fitzgerald rubbed his handcuffed wrist and stared at the ground.
“Has he killed that woman?” he asked.
“Which one, now?” I said. “The one you don’t know anything about?”
“Cormac’s not one for talking much.”
“He told me he was drinking with you last night,” I said to Fitzgerald. “Was that a lie?”
“It’s true.”
“What bar?”
“Molly McGuire’s,” he said, probably thinking he was confirming some kind of alibi for Lonigan.
I pointed at Jimmy. “That’s where you’re hanging out, Detective. Molly McGuire’s. You let everyone in the joint know that Pete Fitzgerald’s squealing like a stuck pig.”
Fitzgerald swung around to try to grab the back of Jimmy’s windbreaker to stop him from leaving, but all he did was wrench his arm. “Wait! Don’t be saying that, please.”
“What, then?” I asked. “You know Cormac helped his uncle get onto the island late Wednesday night, into Thursday?”
“Let me loose from here,” Fitzgerald said. “Everything aches, okay? My wrist, my legs, my back. You’ve gotta let me loose.”
“In time, man. Speak up.”
He turned his head toward the boat to see if there was any sign of Cormac Lonigan.
“No way his uncle came here,” he said. “I don’t know anything about his uncle, except Cormac’s deathly afraid of him. Never met him till a week or so ago, but scared of him, just like his own mother is.”
“Well, that’s in the category of ‘nice to know,’ but it’s not helpful to what I need to do.”
“Cormac left the island when I did on Wednesday,” Fitzgerald said, calmly and without emotion. “Normal time, on the late afternoon ferry.”
“When did you come back?”
“Seven thirty Thursday morning. First ferry. And Cormac was on it with me.”
Fitzgerald was beginning to respond to my questions but directed his answers toward Mercer. I stepped back to let my old friend take the lead.
Mercer took the kid through Wednesday on the island in detail, and then Thursday, too.
“What about Thursday night?” Mercer asked.
“Cormac seemed jumpy, is all. I can’t describe it, really, but he wasn’t quite himself,” Fitzgerald said. “I asked him if he wanted to have a drink or two. He didn’t seem to want to go home, so he said ‘yeah,’ and off we were to McGuire’s.”
“What were you drinking?” Mercer asked.
“Usually beer, like I did that night. But Cormac surprised me. He ordered vodka. Tito’s,” Fitzgerald said. “A double Tito’s.”
The handmade Texas vodka had become popular in the city, but it was pricey for a construction worker in Queens.
“Two of those,” he went on, “and he was toasted pretty quick. Asked me if he could borrow some money to buy a burger and another drink. No problem with that, but I told him he’d better slow it down. No point getting hammered having to work the next day.”
“Did he want to talk?” Mercer said.
“Not really. Just jumpy, like I told you. I thought it was to do with his grandfather dying and his uncle coming back.”
“He told you about that?”
“Not a word. But news about the Renners was
all over the neighborhood, people wanting to stay out of their way and all.”
That was a fact I understood.
“Cormac had half a load on before he told me he had done something stupid. Something at work,” Fitzgerald said.
Mercer’s style was as smooth as silk. You’d think he attached no importance to the questions he was asking.
“Like what?”
Fitzgerald rolled his head around and rubbed his neck with his free hand.
“C’mon, kid. You’re almost there,” Mercer said.
“This will come back to me and then there’ll be nowhere to hide,” Fitzgerald said, tears forming in his eyes.
“We know what Cormac did already, Pete,” Mercer said. “We’ve got the evidence in his backpack. We don’t need you to prove it.”
Fitzgerald looked at Mercer straight on. “Then what am I doing? Then what is this about?”
“You need to save your own ass,” Mercer said. “You want to separate yourself out so you’re not charged as an accessory to kidnapping and murder? Then you’d best tell us exactly what you knew and when you knew it.”
Answers came faster now.
“So we’re at the bar, and Cormac’s drinking like a fish,” Fitzgerald said. “Told me that a friend of his needed to spend a night on the island. Maybe two. Liberty Island. That he saw the big story in the newspaper last year about the caretaker being retired and the island without any security at night.”
“Yeah?”
“The friend seemed to know about Fort Wood already, about the way it was boarded up inside the old building.”
“You think Cormac told him?” Mercer asked.
“Could be. He likes to go down there on his break. Just hang out solo in a quiet place,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s pretty familiar with it.”
“And you?”
“I was curious about it, yeah. I went downstairs with him a few weeks back, in early September, I guess it was. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that.”
“Lunch break?”
“Exactly.”
“Popped a cold beer or two?” Mercer asked.
“It was a hot day. Yeah, we’ve done that.”
“So what about his friend who wanted to spend the night? How was he planning to get here?”
“Same way anyone else would, I guess. It’s a two-minute boat ride from the Jersey side to the dock on the back of the island. You got a boat, you could come here from anywhere.”
“No security at all during the night?” Mercer said.
“No people anymore. Not since they closed the caretaker’s house up,” Fitzgerald said. “A few surveillance cameras, but if you know where they are, you can come in underneath them.”
“To do what?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “All Cormac had to do was remove some of the wooden boarding, loosen it up so his friend could pull it aside and sneak in. Then be able to nail it shut again. That’s all.”
“Weren’t you interested in what this imaginary friend of Cormac’s wanted to do here?”
Pete Fitzgerald looked up at Mercer. “I figured I knew.”
“And what was that?” Mercer asked.
“I figured Cormac was trying to do the right thing. Trying to help a guy who needed to get out of his uncle’s way.”
I stared at him, trying to get a read on his credibility.
Mercer went on. “Why’s that?”
“Emmet Renner’s a name nobody wants to hear again, out where I live. Word got around that he had come back, and everybody was scrambling to keep out of Renner’s way. He’s got a rep for evening scores,” Fitzgerald said. “Cormac’s a good guy. Wouldn’t say anything bad about his own family, but he knew he’d become a sort of pariah if Emmet caught up with any of his old crowd.”
“So helping someone hide out over here is what you thought?”
“A union guy, probably. Someone like me, that’s what I thought. Someone who just needed to make himself scarce till the grandfather died. By then, Emmet will have to be gone again.”
“How about the woman?” Mercer said.
“I’m telling you what I know. Cormac never said anything about a woman.”
“Not even today?” I broke in. “Not even when you went back to get the sheet?”
Fitzgerald lowered his head. “Look, we saw you guys come on the island—word got around pretty quick that cops were here.”
“Why was that a problem?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a problem for anybody but Cormac. He got jumpy again, all at once. Said he had to go back and check that his friend wasn’t still in the fort.”
“And you just volunteered to go along?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I just did.”
“Stupid.”
“That’s your opinion.”
“Really stupid,” I said. “You walked yourself right into a felony, kid.”
“I didn’t even go in past the wooden boards, Detective. I swear it. I just waited for Cormac in the hallway.”
“What? To come out with the sheet and the handcuffs?”
“Handcuffs? I didn’t see any handcuffs,” Fitzgerald said, rattling the arm with the metal bracelet. “They make noise like this. There were no cuffs. What felony are you talking about?”
“Kidnap, if you’re feeling lucky. Murder, if you’re acting as stupid as I think you are.”
I was close to the kid’s breaking point.
“And his friend?”
“Gone. He said there was no one in there.”
“Was he surprised?” Mercer asked.
“Not surprised so much as relieved.”
I took the handcuff key from Jimmy North and held it up for Fitzgerald to see. “You want me to believe you never asked your pal who he was trying to help?”
“It’s true.”
“Or today, that you never pressed him for what he had put himself—and you—at risk for?” I asked, walking toward him.
“I told you. I thought he was doing a good thing, for himself and for everyone afraid of his uncle Emmet,” Fitzgerald said. “It was over today. I didn’t think there was no risk in walking back with him to the fort. Now are you letting me go?”
He watched as I put the key in the handcuff lock. “Actually, I thought I’d power it up another notch. See if there’s anything Cormac said that you might have forgotten to tell me.”
I’d never been into brutality as a means for getting information from a perp. But I thought I might be capable of anything to get Coop back.
Pete Fitzgerald yelped as I turned the metal on his wrist.
“Better?” I asked.
“Make him stop!” the kid screamed.
I knew Mercer was about to shut me down.
“Anything?”
“Cormac was relieved, is all,” Fitzgerald said, as fast as I asked the question. He took one more glance back, in the fading light, to the boat where Cormac was restrained. “He came out holding that sheet and told me his friend was gone. And …”
He paused.
“And what?”
“He said something that made no sense, so I ignored it.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“He said, ‘Thank God he’s gone.’ And I asked him where to? ’Cause so far as I was aware, Emmet Renner was still in Woodside. Might not be smart for this friend to be going back,” Fitzgerald said. “And Cormac’s answer to me was ‘Manhattan.’”
I grabbed his shirt and shook him. “Did he say where in Manhattan? What about it made no sense to you?”
“The lighthouse. The lighthouse in Manhattan,” Fitzgerald said. “I would have told you earlier, but it made no sense to me.”
I let go of him faster than he could breathe. I handed the key back to Jimmy North and told him to unlock the cuffs.
Fitzgerald doubled over and started to cry. “It made no sense because there’s no damn lighthouse in Manhattan.”
I started to trot down to the dock.
“What do I do with him now?
” Jimmy shouted as Mercer ran after me.
“Take him to the squad with you,” I said. “Feed and water him, Jimmy. Give him a gold medal and get everything else he wants to say out on the table.”
“Hold up, Mike!” Mercer called out.
I stopped in front of the wooden crates, opened one, and removed half a dozen Roman candles from inside it.
“What did the kid say that turned you around?” Mercer asked.
“The lighthouse in Manhattan. That’s where we’re going.”
“Why? Where is it?”
“If you’d been any closer to it this morning, you would have bumped into it,” I said, making my way to the Intrepid.
“Where?”
“Jeffrey’s Hook, Mercer. The last lighthouse standing in Manhattan is at Jeffrey’s Hook.”
FORTY-FIVE
I jumped onto the deck of the boat and stowed the fireworks on the rear seat. I put the key in the ignition and started to untie the rope at the bow.
“Tell me why,” Mercer said, his hand on the stern cleat.
“’Cause it’s Renner territory, if I’m thinking right. ’Cause I played there as a kid, like I was telling Jimmy this morning, and now the whole picture’s coming into focus.”
“Where’s Jeffrey’s Hook?”
I straightened up and looked at Mercer. “I’m going to tell you what this is and why I think it might be the place Renner would lure me to. And then I’m going to ask you and Peterson to set the trap, okay?”
“Nothing’s okay till I hear you out.”
“Listen up, ’cause I’m moving fast,” I said, turning on the running lights at the front of the boat. “Jeffrey’s Hook is one of the most treacherous points in the Hudson River, right next to Fort Washington.”
“Under the George Washington Bridge?” Mercer said.
“Exactly. The little red lighthouse,” I said. “But long before there was a bridge, there was this rocky piece of land—the hook—jutting out into the river at a site where there were more shipwrecks than anyplace in the city except for Hell Gate.”
I took the flashlight out of my rear pants pocket and placed it on the cockpit.
“In the early nineteenth century, the only thought given to preventing wrecks was to hang a red pole with two lights on it out into the river. It wasn’t till the 1920s that the city bought this old lighthouse from Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Ten years later, when the George Washington Bridge opened right on top of the spot, there was no longer a need for the little beacon.”
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