A Dark and Broken Heart (3 page)

The handheld crackles once, but it’s just a burst of static. He checks the volume, the small red light on top. Williams instinctively reaches for the M16. There is electricity everywhere. He can feel the raw copper taste in the back of his throat.

Madigan stays his hand. Williams closes his eyes and holds his breath for just a second.

A bead of sweat breaks free from Madigan’s hairline and starts down his forehead. He wipes it away.

“To hell with this,” Williams hisses, and it’s little more than an exhalation of pent-up nerves.

“Chill, chill,” Fulton says, and Madigan looks sideways at the man, and behind the light in his eyes he sees the thing that makes them do this. The
hunger
. That’s the only word to use. It’s a hunger, a need, a reason to live. More often than not it’s a reason to die, but until then it’s just who and what they are. They kowtow to no one. They grant respect to no one but their own kind, and even then it is granted begrudgingly. These are precisely the kind of people who would do something as foolish as robbing one of Sandià’s drug houses. That’s the second reason Madigan chose them.

When Bobby Landry saw the beat-to-shit Chevy Caprice pull up in front of the house, he slowed down inside. Everything went quiet. He held the radio in his hand for a moment, and then raised it to his mouth. His finger hesitated over the
TALK
button. He watched carefully. He had expected an inconspicuous car, something that no one would give a second thought to, but this was taking it to the extreme. This could be nothing more than a crowd of Costa Rican junkies after a score.

He breathed slowly. Timing was everything. If the crew went in the back before the money arrived, they’d be dead. If they went in too late they be dead all over again.

If they’d known faces it would have helped. Any of Sandià’s people could be on the delivery run. And Sandià had no shortage of mules and carriers and grunts.

Three men came out of the Caprice. Two crossed the sidewalk and stood at the gate. The third hung back with the car. They were scanning the street, no question. If a fourth man got out, and if that fourth man was carrying a duffel, a suitcase, a backpack—anything that was big enough to contain a quarter mill in used bundles—then Landry would be on the radio to the crew at the back of the property.

Landry held his breath. It was good. This was it. This was the deal. Right here, right now.

The man at the side of the Caprice leaned down to speak to someone in the car. That someone then came out slowly, glancing back over the way, all eyes and ears, and once he was out of the vehicle and upright Landry saw the bag.

This was it.

The gig was on.

He pressed
TALK
.

Madigan was on his feet, his back to the wall, the side of his face against the left edge of the window frame. Williams stood to his right, Fulton over on the other side, and through the glass Madigan watched for the first sign of the door opening at the base of the internal stairwell. He’d been inside once before. He knew the layout well enough. The front door opened into the lower hallway. The stairwell started not six feet away and ran a straight line up to the second floor. The window was ahead of a turn in the stairs. From his vantage point he could see the light from the street as the
front door opened, see the light disappear as the front door was closed behind the delivery crew, and then they would start up the stairs. One man ahead, the carrier behind him, the other two behind him. Madigan’s Mossberg through the window would take out the lead man, maybe the carrier. In that moment of stunned confusion generated by the attack, all three of them—Madigan himself, Fulton, and Williams—had to be through the aperture and firing before these assholes even had a chance to tell the time. The narrow stairwell, the fact that the two front men would fall backward into the latter two—these things Madigan counted on. Surprise and gravity. Shock and awe. Bodies in motion and then at rest.

The light was there.

Madigan even heard voices.

He reached out his right hand and stayed Williams once again. He nodded to Fulton. Fulton looked like a man with a fire in his gut. He had the .45 in one hand, the .38 in the other. Doc-fucking-Holliday.

The delivery crew started up the stairs. The lead man was eight or ten steps up before the front door closed below him. One more step, one more second, and then Madigan was turning, the Mossberg ahead of him like an extension of his own body, his finger jerking, the slide coming back a second time, a third, the window exploding inward.

The first barrage took the guy’s face away. Madigan hit him just beneath the chin, but the trajectory was angled upward by just a few degrees. The instinctive response of the lead man to pull his head back away from the source of the blast meant that his face was parallel to the angle of the shot. Most of his features were on the ceiling before he knew what the hell had happened.

The weight of the front man, the fact that he fell backward into the carrier, the narrow stairwell—all these things worked in Madigan’s favor. He was through the devastated window and firing more shots down into the melee of arms and legs before any one of them had a chance to pull a gun, let alone fire it.

Fulton and Williams came in behind Madigan, and the three of them let fly with a barrage of gunfire sufficient to decimate not only the four men now heaped at the bottom of the stairway, but the risers themselves, the banister, and much of the lower hallway. Plaster and wood fragments, chunks of masonry, carpeting, blood, bone, flesh, teeth, and the smoke and noise and screaming of the
men beneath them. Another day in hell. It was a turkey shoot. It was a massacre.

Madigan stopped firing only when there were no shells left.

Fulton and Williams followed suit.

The silence was eerie, far more unsettling than the war that had just taken place. The smoke hung in a thick pall above them. The smell of sweat and cordite and blood was thick enough to taste.

Madigan took the stairs at their edges for greatest support, descending tentatively, hoping that the risers didn’t collapse beneath him. The idea of landing feet-first in the disaster zone that lay there not ten feet below him was . . . well, picking Costa Ricans out of the treads and welts of his boots was not something he’d scheduled for this Tuesday afternoon.

Williams, using his common sense, lay down on the landing and leaned over toward Madigan. He held out his hand, and Madigan gripped it. From halfway down the stairs he could reach the bag, but it was beneath bodies, and it took Madigan some time to work it free. One of the handles was snapped, the bag punctured in numerous places, spattered with blood, but the bodies had acted as a shield against it and it was remarkably intact considering all that had taken place.

Madigan pulled it up by the good handle, and Williams assisted him in his return to the upper landing.

At the top Madigan took a second to check the contents of the bag. Thick wads of hundreds and fifties. Looked like a great deal more than he’d anticipated. He smiled to himself, but gave no outward acknowledgment to Fulton and Williams.

“Go,” he mouthed, and followed them to the window. He indicated with his hand, knowing full well that they would be hearing nothing clearly for a while. In his own ears the ringing was intense, deafening almost.

They were out, across the roof of the outbuilding, down into the alleyway and into the street within thirty seconds.

The van was already on the go as they reached it, Madigan up front with the bag, Fulton and Williams in back with the weaponry.

Landry took the first three hundred yards at speed, and then he hit First Avenue and slowed right down. He headed southwest, followed a road parallel to the FDR Drive, kept within the limit, took it easy, and when he crossed East 117th, he started to relax. No sirens. Not a sound. No one following them.

“Okay, where to now?” he asked Madigan.

“Change of vehicle near the Metropolitan Hospital. There’s an alleyway off of East 109th. Get to the junction with Second and I’ll direct you.”

Madigan glanced over his shoulder. Fulton and Williams were grinning like crazies queuing for meds.

Went like clockwork. Went like a dream.

Half an hour’s work for way more than a quarter mill.

Madigan clutched the bag on his lap. He could feel the bundles inside. This was the way out. Lawyers, Sandià, whoever the hell else wanted a piece of him, they were all history. Rock
and
roll, motherfuckers . . . Rock and fucking roll.

4
SHAME AND PAIN

M
y heart goes like a train. The four fifteen out of Grand Central. I’ve got the bag on my lap. My hands are sweating. I would choke someone to death for a couple of Mandrax. A couple of shots of Jack. Anything
.

Jesus Christ
.

The way those people just exploded down the stairs. It was a slaughter; no other word for it. Didn’t even have time to see our faces. The guy up front I’d seen before. I know his face. I’ve seen him with Sandià
.

I daren’t hold out my hands. They shake. I can feel them as they grip the bag. I can feel the money inside. Like freedom. Feels like freedom. Maybe
.

Landry is driving steady—not too fast, not too slow
.

Williams and Fulton are laughing like jackasses in back. I want to smack the pair of them quiet, but I’m not saying a word
.

Just need to get to the storage unit, change cars, get as far away from these guys as possible, and then disappear into . . . into where?

Through the window I see familiar streets. We’re out of East Harlem and heading toward Yorkville
.

My scalp itches. The palms of my shaking hands are sweating. I look down at them. They feel like someone else’s hands. The hands of Orloff
.

Jesus, I’m losing it
.

Williams is laughing like a hyena. I turn round and look at him for a moment. He has kids. Fulton does too. Landry doesn’t. None of them are married. Smarter than me on that count. Some marriages work because each person thinks the other’s too good for them, like what did they do to deserve this person, you know? They try all the harder to keep the show on the road, and they’re both trying real hard and it kind of works out for a while. Me? Hell, after they got under the surface, when they really started to see behind the facade of charm and self-control, all the women I was ever involved with soon understood that I was way beneath them. Maybe it was exciting for a while—the unpredictability, the dangerous edges and sharp corners that lay just beneath that thin, thin veneer of
social respectability. But that veneer wears away real quick, and then what you got? You got Madigan, Vincent Madigan, and all the demons of the underworld he brings along for the ride
.

Hell, where did it all go so wrong?

Landry says something. I look at him for a moment and wait for the words to register, and then I get it
. . .

5
DEATH PARTY

“L
eft,” Madigan says, “and then sharp right at the end.”

Landry follows the instruction, and the van bears left and then takes a right at the end of the alleyway and comes to a stop.

Madigan sits quiet for a moment.

They are all waiting for him to say whatever he’s going to say.

He says nothing.

Opening the passenger door, he climbs down from the van, walks to the end of the alleyway, and produces a set of keys from his pocket. It is only then that he notices how much blood is on his right shoe. He doesn’t have another pair. That was dumb. That was a case of not thinking it through. He would have to stop someplace and buy some sneakers or something, get rid of his shoes as fast as possible.

He opens up the door, steps inside, flicks a switch, and waits as the garage door comes up slowly. The van is already nudging its way into the darkness before the gate is all the way up. Once inside, Madigan closes the door and switches on the lights. Back against the wall is a dark sedan, plain and inconspicuous. In the rear seat are four canvas duffels, all matching. Madigan brings them out and puts them on the floor.

“Let’s see it,” Landry says.

Madigan upends his bag and the bundles of money fall out.

Williams whistles through his teeth. “Jesus Mary, Mother of God,” he whispers.

Madigan is down on his knees. He’s fanning through the tied bundles, opening them up, counting out fifties, hundreds, twenties.

“Separate them out by denomination,” he says. “Count up what you got, and then we’ll divide.”

It takes a good twenty minutes. There’s a lot of money.

“Four eighty-five,” Madigan finally concludes. “That’s one-twenty-one, two-fifty each.”

“Shit, man, you do that math shit in your head?” Williams asks.

Madigan smiles. He starts dividing up the money.

A hundred and twenty grand. Better than he expected. Enough to give Sandià the whole seventy, thirty to the lawyers and have twenty left over. Maybe he’d go buy Cassie a car for her eighteenth. That would knock the shit out of all of them.

“You as happy as me, man?” Fulton asks.

“I’m happy,” Madigan says, and then he’s got his money bundled into his duffel. He’s over at the sedan, reaching in through the driver’s side door and retrieving his handgun from the glove box. He tucks it in the back of his pants and straightens his leather jacket. He looks down at his right shoe again. There sure is a hell of a lot of blood. It must have just come spraying up from below as those poor motherfuckers got blasted. Hell of a thing.

“So you’re dumping the van,” Madigan tells Landry. “Take it a long way away. I’m serious, now. Drive it for sixty, seventy miles upstate. Find some parking garage, somewhere huge that has no security cameras. Just park it in there, wipe it all down, and walk away. Don’t stop on the way, don’t speed, don’t get pinched by the highway patrol, okay?”

“I know, man. I know. Trust me. I’ve done this before, and I sure as hell mean to do it again.” Landry looks at Madigan like a scolded kid.