Mad Dog Justice (13 page)

“No. For your information, Detective, that wasn’t
all
I did. Just so you know, I went to the restaurant and looked it over very carefully. I retained a guy who’s a business broker and advises
about these kinds of transactions. He specializes in restaurant takeovers and buyouts and assesses whether or not an asking price is reasonable.”

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

“Martin West … guy in White Plains.”

Morgan nods and looks like he’s ready to say something, but Danny goes on. “And I spoke with the restaurant owner. We haggled over the price. I got him down considerably and extended the buyout terms to a five-year period at a reasonable interest rate. I forced him to become another silent partner because by waiting five years for the final payment, he had a financial stake in the place doing well. And what’s more, I made sure he could put a lien only on the restaurant’s assets, not our personal ones, if for some reason we couldn’t cover the monthly nut and had to fold.”

Morgan’s hand goes up, as though he’s heard enough, but Danny keeps going.

“I examined the lease, which had ten years left on it, so we wouldn’t face a rent hike anytime soon. I looked at their books for the previous five years, analyzed their cash flow, and did a full accounting and financial analysis. So, Detective, I certainly
did
do my due diligence.”

“But you didn’t look into Egan’s finances enough to see where he got the two hundred fifty from, did you?”

“I did what I could. I called people in Vegas. I think you call them
references
, Detective. Kenny had a fine track record as the manager of some top-notch restaurants—the Prime Steakhouse at Bellagio, for one, and a few others, too. I was told Kenny was a whiz with the clientele … made everyone feel at home. And to tell you the God’s honest truth, I thought his account balance and credit ratings were all I needed since he intended to pay his share with a certified check. You know what that is, don’t you,
Detective
?”

Morgan keeps silent, but those thick eyebrows are still sky-high.

“That seemed thorough enough for me.” Dan coughs again and brings up a wad of phlegm. He swallows it.

“So tell me something, Mr. Burns. After you and Dolan decided to pull out of the restaurant, Egan just disappeared from the face of the earth, right?”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

Morgan nods, crosses his arms in front of his chest, and waits.

“Lemme ask
you
something for a change,” Danny says. “Why’re you asking me all this crap? Why can’t you just find the bastard who shot me?”

“Oh, we’ll do our best.”

“And what the hell does my getting shot have to do with Kenny Egan’s finances a year and a half ago?”

“Oh, you don’t think Egan’s finances and activities are important?”

“I’ll tell you what’s important—that I get the hell out of this hospital and get on with my life. That I get back to the office and my clients.” As those words pass his lips, Dan virtually feels a thump in his chest and hears
pfft
or
pop
, the sound just as the bullet penetrated him. It’s a momentary flash that sends a chill through his spine.

“Speaking of your office, you going back there at night?”

“Not a chance. Not until you solve this case. Or if the landlord puts in better security.”

“You know what, Mr. Burns? I have the feeling you and the good doctor hold the keys to this case. You telling me I’m wrong?”

“You’re dead wrong, Detective.”

“You know
you
could be
dead wrong
, Mr. Burns, if you aren’t more forthcoming.” Morgan’s tongue protrudes into his cheek. He nods his head and squints.

“I don’t like your implication, Detective.”

“You’re a poor liar, Mr. Burns.”

“I think it’s time for you to leave, Detective. And please, I’m asking you very politely. Stop harassing me before you and the Yonkers PD hear from my attorney.”

“Don’t threaten me, Mr. Burns.”

“We’re done here,” Dan says, heading for the bathroom. “Be sure to close the door on your way out.”

Morgan stands and glowers at Danny. “Mr. Burns, I
do
believe you and your doctor friend are in a world of trouble. More than you’ll ever be able to handle. Believe me, the shit’s gonna hit the fan. Big-time.”

R
oddy sets the plastic fork onto the coffee table beside a container of chicken salad. He finishes off the cooled-down coffee and puts down the Styrofoam cup.

He sits in the darkened living room. He doesn’t even want to open the refrigerator because the little interior light could be a clear signal someone’s home. The house is dead quiet; he hears the basement furnace kick in followed by the water pump. It’s eight in the evening. Roddy wonders why he didn’t get out of Bronxville after visiting Danny this morning. Especially after seeing that steely-eyed bastard in the Navigator. He knows he’s reluctant to leave everything behind. The lovely Tudor house is the last vestige of the wonderful life he’s been living.

Jesus. Is this the way you feel when your life’s falling apart and coming to an end?

So here he is gobbling takeout crap from the deli counter at Stop & Shop. Alone and in the dark, literally—there’s not a single light on in the house—knowing he’ll take off early in the morning, and he hasn’t the foggiest idea where he’ll be sleeping tomorrow night.

The mahogany grandfather clock chimed only a few minutes ago—right on the hour. It’s a mournful sound, especially on a cold February night amid the eeriness of being alone in the dark—like when he was a kid and that bastard Horst would lock
him in a closet. He hasn’t thought of that in years. But now recollections of Brooklyn and his younger years intrude at random moments of the day or night.

Ordinarily, on a night like this, the house would feel warm and cozy, and he’d have a sense of family cohesion, of being loved. Tracy would be reading a library journal or novel, or maybe she’d be watching television. The kids would be in their rooms. The fireplace would cast its flickering glow through the den, and he’d be sitting next to Tracy, feeling the warmth of her body next to his. The aroma of a home-cooked meal would linger in the air, and it would all signify home—and the life he’s adored.

But not tonight and maybe never again. His teeth begin chattering, as though he’s freezing. Gooseflesh covers his arms even though the thermostat’s set for seventy-five degrees. It’s an inner coldness coming from his core.

For at least the thousandth time over the past few days, Roddy recalls the chain of events leading to where he and Danny find themselves tonight: Kenny’s proposition about the silent partner thing, the steak-chomping goons and gangsters who chowed down at McLaughlin’s amid the feckless uptown crowd of star fuckers and gawkers, and then learning Kenny owed Grange tons of money. The juice was running, and by the time Grange showed up, they were nearly half a million into the hole.

The hole …

Roddy wishes he could obliterate the memory of Snapper Pond and the grave. With lanterns and the shovels thwacking into the soft, swampy soil near the pond. Digging a hole for Grange. And for Kenny, too. The thought of the grave sends a hot streak of dread through Roddy. He’d fired four shots but recovered only three shells—couldn’t find the fourth one—lying near or deep inside the grave. He rummaged around by lamplight, feeling for it, but no such luck. It was gone. He still worries someone could find it. What a sick scenario it was—from the back
room at McLaughlin’s to dropping Danny off at the Tuckahoe train station.

He became a mad dog that night, for the first and only time in years—in decades. And he’s paid the price because he hasn’t been the same since. Yes, Tracy’s right. It’s painful to admit, but he brims with mistrust. It runs like a deep current in his being, and maybe it will never leave him. Since Snapper Pond, he’s changed, or as his shrink friend Dick Simons would say, he’s regressed—gone back to an earlier time in his own being, one that made sense back in Brooklyn, among the street toughs, phone booth bookies, barroom thugs, pool hall gamblers, cardsharps, crooks, dead enders, and lowlife wannabes. He needed to survive back then, to keep his head above the oil-slicked waters of Sheepshead Bay and its sleazy denizens.

And now the beast rules once again.

Roddy feels he’s a night creature lurking in the shadows of life around him. Jesus, he feels like a lone wolf in a dark lair … or like a mad dog.

He feels adrenaline-jacked and jumpy, like he has to keep moving. He gets up, paces for a few moments, and looks out the front window onto Clubway. It’s deserted, as it usually is at night. It’s a quiet, dark street at the edge of the Siwanoy Country Club, just off the fairway of the ninth hole, in lovely Bronxville, a peaceful bedroom community.

Roddy heads for the kitchen. In the dark, he opens the refrigerator only a few inches and grabs a bottle of Bud. He closes the door quickly and twists the top. Then he raises the bottle to his lips and swigs the brew. He chugs it down and feels the cold, tangy bite at the back of his throat. Swallow after swallow—until the bottle is drained. A fuzzy semiwarmth invades him as the alcohol seeps into his brain.

He’s painfully aware of the silence in the house. Roddy knows he can’t bear sleeping in the bed he and Tracy have shared for
years. Much too painful a reminder of what’s changed in his life. He’ll just crumple onto the living room couch and wait for sleep to come.

He wonders if this deep loneliness is how you feel when you know you’re dying. Is this how it is when everything you know or have ever known is over, gone forever? Is this the sensation you have before you slip into nothingness?

He suddenly recalls Danny’s question the night they drove south on the Taconic from Snapper Pond.

“Roddy? Lemme ask you something.”

“Ask.”

“You believe in God?”

For a while, Roddy drove in silence. He thought about the stream of his life—the flow of past and present—as the Taconic’s tree line streaked by in the night, while the Sequoia’s tires drubbed on the asphalt highway.

Finally, he answered, “
Dan, for you there’s a God.”

Yes, Danny has a good soul, and he shouldn’t be punished this way. He was never a Brooklyn hard-ass like the other guys who hung around Leo’s or the pool hall or the Nostrand Lanes Bowling Alley. Danny was the only one from the old crowd who went directly to college, not the army or driving a truck, or prison, or working as a low-level errand boy for some bookie or mob underboss in Mill Basin. Danny was a straight arrow whose sights were set on a decent, hardworking life.

A straight arrow, and yet Roddy finds himself mistrusting Danny, his best friend going so far back he can’t remember when they met. Aside from Dan’s mother, he was the only good person in Roddy’s childhood. And here he is, wondering if Danny was part of Grange and Kenny’s shakedown conspiracy.
How loathsome can you get, Roddy?
A tide of self-hatred washes over him as he pictures Dan lying in that hospital bed the night he was nearly killed.

Oh, how ugly I am with my suspicions, my mistrust, and my readiness to see the worst in everyone but myself
.

Roddy tosses the empty bottle into the kitchen trash bin, opens the refrigerator a few inches, and grabs another. He takes a swig and heads back to the living room. As he plops onto the sofa, his thoughts return to Tracy and the kids. As much as he’s loved this house, it’s nothing more than stone, wood, and stucco—merely building materials, a construction of parts, nothing more. Without the people he loves, it’s meaningless—it’s nothing.

Roddy gulps another mouthful of beer and moves to the living room window. Peering through a slit in the drapery, he sees the road. There are no streetlights, and he hasn’t turned on the porch light. The night is so dark, the air looks purple.

Across Clubway is the edge of the fairway. Looking into the night—maybe a hundred feet to the right of the house—Roddy sees the outline of something. He squints and peers through the darkness.

It’s there: a Lincoln Navigator parked on the far shoulder. Like the one he saw this morning in Yonkers.

A gust of wind kicks up and Roddy sees it: a wisp of exhaust curls out of the vehicle’s tailpipes.

The Navigator is idling with its headlights turned off.

Roddy’s heart jumps in an electric swell.

Separating the venetian blinds, he looks carefully. He can’t see the driver in the murky interior; it’s likely the windows are darkened. There’s no ambient light. There’s no way to tell who—or how many men—might be waiting in the Navigator.

With his heartbeat thudding in his throat, Roddy wonders when the vehicle’s doors will open and a bunch of guys will get out. He knows they’ll be packing heat—Glocks, Rugers, maybe Tec-9s. Lethal shit, loaded with lead, designed to kill. His handgun would be no match for such firepower.

They must know he’s home alone.

What does he do?

Back in the Rangers, you learned ambush tactics: you searched for a place to hide where the enemy’s options were limited, like a narrow passageway through a ravine—a choke point where you could pick them off one by one. It had to be a place from which they couldn’t make a group assault.

But he’s in his own house. He doesn’t want to hide in a closet or in the upstairs bathroom. They’d blast holes in the wooden door and he’d go down in a fusillade of lead. There’s no basement crawl space in the house, but on the ceiling of the upstairs linen closet, there’s a hinged hatch leading to the attic. He could get up there, take his cell phone with him, and call 911 while he lies amid the updraft of stifling attic heat and scattered mouse droppings. But he’d be trapped in a confined space. It would be only a matter of time before they’d find him and blast him through the ceiling.

He’d be dead meat with his blood dripping down through holes in the ceiling.

Roddy could lie prone on the carpet at the top of the stairs. He would be barely visible from below. The only way they could come at him would be in single file up the stairs. He’d expend only one bullet per man—enough for seven of them.