A Dark and Broken Heart (42 page)

An eye for an eye.

A life for a life.

Madigan looked down at Isabella Arias, naked there in his arms, and he listened to the sound of her breathing as she drifted into sleep. Amid all he felt, he believed he could hear the echo of that sound in his heart.

He closed his eyes.

He knew that whatever sleep he would find would be awkward and restless.

No more than he deserved.

56
SHE’S LIKE HEROIN TO ME

I
n the brief hour of twilight before dawn Madigan managed to ease himself out of the bed and escape to his own room. He took the duffel with him, the money within. He was careful not to wake Isabella, careful to make as little sound as possible as he took his jeans and T-shirt from the floor. He made it out to the car and buried the duffel beneath the spare tire in the trunk. Then he went back into the house and took a shower.

By the time Isabella appeared it was after seven. He was dressed, making breakfast in the kitchen, and she was there behind him, her arms around his waist. She felt him tense up, but she said nothing. She merely kissed his neck and said, “You sleep okay?”

“Sure,” he said, and he turned and smiled at her as best he could. He did not know what he was feeling, did not know what he was thinking, and he figured the best solution was to get out of there as quickly as possible.

Madigan did not regret what had happened. He could not regret it. He knew from the experiences of too many years and too many mistakes that regret was a futile waste of time and energy. What was done was done. Perhaps he had never really applied what he knew, but in this instance he did. Beyond regret there was only damage control, avoidance, acceptance, and in some cases the ability to make the problem disappear. The situation with Isabella could not just vanish. It had to be faced.

“Isabella—” he started.

She smiled, but there was something hard beneath the expression. “Do not tell me that this was a mistake, Vincent Madigan. Even if you believe it was, do not tell me that this was a mistake. No one likes to be told that they were a mistake, and unless you are now going to throw me out on the street, then we have to go on living beneath the same roof . . .”

Madigan laughed. He appreciated her directness.

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t going to say that.” He reached out and
took her hand. He walked to the kitchen table, asked her to sit down. She did so, and Madigan sat facing her, still holding her hand.

“I am not a good man to know,” he said.

She opened her mouth to speak.

“Let me finish, Isabella . . . please.”

She nodded, didn’t say a word.

“I am not a good man. I am a police officer, yes, but that counts for nothing, as you know. I have made a lot of mistakes. I have done a lot of things that I shouldn’t have done. It is too late to go back and change many of them, but there are some that can be fixed. I have to fix them now.”

“Sandià?” she asked.

“Among others, yes.”

She looked away for a moment, and then looked back. “I expect nothing of you,” she said. “You owe me nothing. What happened last night was something I wanted to have happen, and it did. I don’t know why, Vincent . . . because I am afraid, because I am lonely, because . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know, and I don’t think it matters now.” She smiled, laughed briefly. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You don’t have to marry me.”

Madigan smiled back. “Aw shucks,” he said. “And I went and bought the ring an’ everything.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and then Madigan told her he had to go out.

“So eat some breakfast,” she said. “I’ll finish making it, and then you go.”

“Yes,” he said. “Breakfast first.”

A half hour later he was driving away from the house. He’d told Isabella to stay inside, just as before. Nothing had changed. This was the way it had to be until he said otherwise. She neither protested nor argued. She asked if he could check on Melissa for her.

“If I can,” Madigan told her. “I have to do some things. Important things. If I do this right then we’re gonna come through the other side of this . . . okay?”

She reached out and touched his face. He closed his eyes, felt the warmth of her hand against his skin. He had missed this. Oh, how he had missed this.

“So go,” she said. “Make it right.”

And he had gone, all the while asking himself if he could lie to this woman forever, if he could get away with never telling her the truth of what had happened in the Sandià house.

The answer was no. She would have to know. Somehow, sometime, she would have to know. Otherwise he would be starting again with the same old patterns in place.

But then there was another possibility. The good chance that he wouldn’t come through this, just as he had considered the night before.

Could he do this?

Yes, he could do this. There was no other way.

Madigan stopped at the motel and gave a couple of bundles of money from the Sandià robbery to Bernie Tomczak. He also returned Bernie’s cellphone, the original one that held the recording of his conversation with Duncan Walsh. Bernie knew what to do.

“You made the calls I asked you to?” Madigan asked.

“Sure I did. You think I’m dumb, or what?”

“What time?”

“You know what time, Vincent. Eleven o’clock exactly.”

“There’s gonna be two of them?”

“Jesus, Vincent, of course there are. You told me what you needed, I arranged it. That was the deal. Just cool your jets, okay? They’re gonna be there.”

“If this goes wrong . . .”

“Vincent . . . if this screws up . . . Well, it goes without saying that I am screwed too, right?”

“Right,” Madigan replied. “We are both in this together. If I get deep-sixed, then you do too.”

“Sometimes I ask myself why I like you, Vincent Madigan. I mean, for Christ’s sake, a week ago you kicked me down an alleyway and beat the crap out of me. I think I lost my sense of smell.”

Madigan smiled wryly. “Well, if that’s the case, you ain’t never gonna have to take a bath again. I did you a favor.”

“Sometimes, in fact most of the damned time, you are such a freakin’ asshole.”

“Well, my friend, the feeling is mutual.”

“You take care, okay? Don’t mess it up.”

“Same to you.”

Madigan left the motel, walked back to the car, headed southwest toward the bridge.

He glanced at his watch. Nine forty. An hour and twenty minutes to go.

Madigan was across the street, a half block from Bernie’s place, by ten after ten. He parked near one of the ramps that came down from the FDR Drive. He could hear the traffic thundering across it. He waited until half past and then he called the precinct. He reported a probable cause on the address, said he could do with a couple of uniforms. Dispatch told him he’d have to wait fifteen minutes at least. Madigan said he needed them faster. That didn’t help any.

Madigan sat back and smoked a cigarette. He watched as the two guys entered the building, and then he took the duffel and walked over there. They opened up when he knocked, he gave them the duffel with the two hundred grand in it, and said to sit tight until he came back.

“When I come back I’m gonna be with two uniforms, okay? Don’t do anything different than what Bernie agreed with you. You fuck this up and someone’s gonna get shot, okay? We come in through the front. You go out through the side. You leave the bag behind. End of story.”

The taller one—dark-haired, looked like getting angry was a lifestyle choice—just nodded. The other one—lighter hair, an awkward zigzag scar across his right cheek and beneath the ear—said, “It’s cool. We know the deal. Bernie told us, okay? Don’t shit it. We’re professionals.”

Professionals?
Madigan wanted to ask him.
Professionals at what exactly? Running away?

Madigan looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes, give or take,” he said. “I’m waiting on backup.”

“Go do your thing,” Anger Management said, and then he closed the front door.

Madigan walked back to the car. The street was deserted. Hell, even if anyone had seen him they wouldn’t be saying anything to the police if they came around. It wasn’t that kind of neighborhood.

Backup showed at five to.

“Take your damned time,” Madigan told the driver.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the uniform said, “but we got a—”

“It’s okay,” Madigan replied. “It might be nothing, but I know the guy who lives here . . . He’s smalltime, but there’s word he got into bigger business recently. There’s two of them in there now. Associates of this guy. Saw them go in there, and I think they were carrying semiautomatic rifles.”

“They got rifles? Hell, you want SWAT, not us,” the other uniform said.

Madigan leaned down and looked through the window. “What’s your name?”

“Young,” he replied.

“And you?” Madigan asked the driver.

“Henderson.”

“Well, okay. Here’s the way it goes, boys. I know the guy who owns the place. His name is Bernie. He’s done some work for me in the past. He’s a CI, okay? He does mostly small-time shit, nothing muscular. But he has a cousin—can’t remember his name—and he’s a player. He’s a heavy hitter, part of a crew. Banks, armored vans, this kind of crap, right? So I think that Bernie is away. Christ knows where he is, but he ain’t home, as far as I can tell. You got two crackheads in there, part of this crew, maybe the cousin, maybe someone else, but they’re in there. I saw them go in an hour ago, and they sure as hell weren’t carrying fishing rods. Know what I mean? Now, we can go in there and sort this thing out, or we can cry home to Mommy and send the big boys to do the work. You do this, you’ll get commends from me, others from the department; everything’s fine an’ dandy. You chicken out on me, and I’ll write you both up.”

“Hey, I’m in,” Young said.

“No problem,” Henderson added.

“Good,” Madigan said. “Now, get your car back over there behind mine; then you make your way down the back of the alleyway and to the rear of the building. You stay on the radio, but keep it down. I’ll call you when I’m at the front door, and you come in through the back. It’s just a drill, okay? Nothing different from how you learned at the academy. Keep your goddamned heads down, keep looking thirty-five different ways at once, and don’t shoot anyone, for Christ’s sake. Only time you shoot someone is if you see a bullet actually coming at you. You understand?”

Young and Henderson said they got it.

They seemed bright enough. Last thing Madigan needed was a couple of uniforms killing Bernie’s friends. The guys inside would
not be armed. That was the deal. Madigan would approach from the front. He would demand entry. Anger Management and Zigzag would do a runner from the side of the property, down the alleyway, out to the street, and Young and Henderson would come in through the back just in time to find them gone. Madigan needed Bernie’s people there to create the appearance that someone other than himself been in possession of the marked money from the Sandià house. If he’d just
happened to find it
, then he left himself open to unwanted suspicion. He needed Young and Henderson as unrelated and official witnesses to the duffel with two hundred grand in it.

Simple. Couldn’t have been easier.

Madigan watched Young and Henderson as they took their black-and-white around behind his car. They parked, left the vehicle, and then made their way down toward the rear of Bernie’s place.

He gave them another three or four minutes and then he called, “You boys all set?”

“Yes, sir,” came the reply.

“I’ll tap you twice on the handset when I’m at the front door.”

“Roger.”

Madigan tucked the handset in his jacket pocket. He walked across the street, went up the steps, and stopped at Bernie’s front door. He pulled his ID, rapped on the door with the heel of his gun.

“Police!” he shouted. “Open up!”

He heard movement inside. Anger Management and Zigzag were probably just at the side door waiting for the right moment.

Madigan banged on the door again.

More movement. He thought he heard a door open somewhere inside. Then a door slammed.

Voices.

Was that voices?

Someone shouting?

Madigan took one step back and then launched his heel at the front door. It cracked along the jamb but didn’t open. He let fly again, and this time the door went through. He rushed into the hallway just as he heard gunfire. One shot? Two?

What the hell was going on?

Madigan—familiar with Bernie’s place—ran through the front room, down the corridor, saw the side door open, went through it,
and there he found Henderson, his gun raised, Young coming up behind him from the rear.

“What the fuck is going on?” Madigan shouted.

“They came out through the side door,” Henderson said. “I was here. I saw the side door and decided to cover it while Young went to the back. They came out through the side door. I shouted for them to stop. I gave them clear warning. They didn’t stop. I think I hit one of them. They kept on going, but I think I hit one of them . . .”

“Jesus Christ! What the hell! I told you to go to the back, for Christ’s sake. I told you to cover the back exit, not the side!”

“I did the drill!” Henderson said. “I did what you told me to do! I did the fucking drill!”

Madigan lowered his gun. He realized he’d been pointing it at Henderson.

“Jesus Christ Almighty! You shot one of them? You fucking shot one of them?”

“I think so, yes,” Henderson said. His expression was one of alarm, confusion, dismay, disbelief. He didn’t understand what was wrong. He’d done the right thing. Madigan had told him to do the drill, and he’d done the drill. Cover all exits. Give clear warning.

“Did he have a gun?” Madigan shouted. “Was he carrying a gun? Were either of them carrying fucking guns?”

Henderson shook his head. His eyes were wide. “I don’t know. I think so. I . . . Christ, I don’t know. I told them to stop, okay? I told them to stop. I gave them warning. I did the routine, all right? I did the routine and they wouldn’t fucking stop and I fired.”

Madigan lowered his head. “Jesus Mary, Mother of God Almighty.” He closed his eyes. He breathed deeply. “Okay, okay, okay . . . Let me think here,” he said. He turned, started back inside. “Come in,” he said to Young and Henderson. “Get inside, for Christ’s sake.”