A Dark and Broken Heart (47 page)

“You are troubled by this?” Sandià asked, following just a yard behind.

“I knew him for a long time,” Madigan replied.

“And now you can remember him for a long time, or you can forget him in an instant.”

“I will forget,” Madigan said, but he lied, and he knew he was
lying. That was what he did and who he was. The Patron Saint of Liars.

“And now . . .” Sandià said. “Now we can resume business as it was. I have lost my nephew. I do not believe I will ever know what happened to the rest of my money. But this is collateral damage. Order has been restored. Things are back how they should be.”

“Yes,” Madigan said, but he knew things would never be the same again.

He had pulled the trigger. He had not known that the gun was unloaded. He had not known that it was a test. He had been prepared to kill Al Bryant to protect himself.

What kind of person was he? Had he changed at all? Had these past few days done nothing? Was he still the horror of a human being that his wives had finally discovered?

Yes, he was. Nothing had changed. He had just proven that he was incapable of change.

“I must go,” Madigan said. “I have things I need to do . . .”

“The earth keeps on spinning,” Sandià said.

“Indeed it does.”

“I am pleased you did not betray me,” Sandià added as Madigan reached the door. “You have confirmed my basic faith in human nature . . .” He smiled, and it was a sincere smile. He was grateful to Madigan for the darkness that he and Madigan shared.

Madigan smiled back. He felt sick. He knew such sickness was visible in his expression, but he hoped that Sandià could not see it.

Madigan opened the door. He went down in the elevator. He made it half a block toward the car, and then he staggered against a streetlight and heaved violently into the gutter.

Looking down, he saw Bryant’s blood on his shoes, just as he had seen Fulton’s less than a week before.

Madigan heaved again.

60
BLACK TRAIN

M
adigan sat in his car for more than an hour. There was nothing in the glove compartment. Nothing at all to help him. His hands shook for twenty minutes, and then they stopped. Then he felt pins and needles in his fingers, his toes, even across his scalp. He was sick twice more, suddenly opening the door and just retching into the street.

He lit a cigarette, but it simply burned—unsmoked—between his fingers, until he felt the heat on his skin and had to put it out.

Every time he closed his eyes, he could see Al Bryant’s face. He could see the blood and brain matter on the wall. He could smell the ammonia, the fear, the terror, the sheer desperation of the situation. He could sense that presence in the bathroom, the certainty with which Bryant had confronted the end of his own life, the way he’d looked when he’d realized that Madigan was going to do nothing to help him. The awareness that he’d been set up, that Madigan had seen right through him, that he had been played all along.

When Madigan stopped thinking, he started the engine.

He drove home. He wanted to be nowhere else. He wanted to see what happened when he arrived there. Among the familiar. What would he feel then? Isabella too. He wanted to know whether he would still possess that compelling need to tell her the truth. To confess? To ask for forgiveness? To see if redemption was possible? Madigan did not know what he wanted to feel, but he knew that what he felt in that moment was not it.

Madigan came to a stop outside the house. He killed the engine, sat there for another fifteen minutes and then exited the car.

He went along the side of the house and entered through the rear. The kitchen was empty. He called out. “Isabella?”

Nothing.

She must be upstairs.

“Isabella?” Louder this time, but again no response.

Madigan removed his jacket, fetched a glass from the cupboard, ice from the freezer, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the shelf to the right of the countertop.

He poured the drink, standing there looking out into the night through the window above the sink, and when he saw the reflection of something behind him he knew.

He did not turn. Not at first. He paused for a moment, his head down, his eyes closed, and then he raised the glass and downed it in one.

He set the glass in the sink.

“Things are never what they appear to be,” Sandià said.

Madigan didn’t reply.

“You are a smart man, Vincent . . . But you are not as smart as you think.”

Madigan turned slowly. He confronted Sandià.

“We untied him,” Sandià said. “We untied Al Bryant and we went through his pockets and we found this . . .”

Sandià raised his hand. In it was the cellphone that Bryant had bought from Bernie.

“I found this, and I was interested to know about Bryant’s contacts, and whether there was anything here I should know . . . and there was a conversation recorded, a very interesting conversation, Vincent. And this conversation was going on between our friend Bernie and some guy called Walsh from Internal Affairs. Seems that Bernie was setting up Walsh, you know? Seems he taped this conversation for some reason. Seems that Bernie knew something about the robbery, and it got me thinking, Vincent . . . and I had to think long and hard to make sense of it.”

Madigan felt everything and nothing. He wondered where Isabella was. He wondered if Sandià had already killed her.

“So I started trying to make two and two add up to four, you know? Bernie has a cellphone with a conversation on it. He intends to sell it to Bryant. Bryant intends to pay for it with my money. Bryant needs to get this Internal Affairs guy off his back for some reason . . . And that reason could be that Bryant was the fourth man in the robbery, or that Walsh suspected Bryant was on my payroll. Either which way, it would be worth it to Bryant to get this cellphone out of circulation. And I started to wonder how Bryant might have ended up with my money, money that you knew was marked, money you knew would serve no purpose for anyone. And then I figured that was too easy an explanation,
Vincent . . . I really did. I didn’t want to doubt you, Vincent. I really didn’t. And then I started to wonder if you really could be involved in all of this. And so I came over here to talk to you, to really have a heart-to-heart about everything that has happened, to clear the air, you know? I came over here to settle things once and for all, and what did I find?”

Madigan looked up at Sandià. Sandià was smiling. Avuncular, patient, almost compassionate.

“I find the girl, Vincent—the one I’ve been looking for all this time—and she is right here, Vincent, and she thought I was you. She heard me coming in through the back door and she called out your name, and you can imagine her reaction when she saw me . . .”

Sandià laughed to himself. “You should have seen her face, Vincent. It was a helluva thing to witness.”

“So I get her all quieted down and she starts to behave herself, and that gives me a little time to think. Why is Vincent Madigan sheltering this woman? Why is my longtime friend and associate hiding this woman from me, a woman who can implicate me in something that will cause me a great deal of trouble? What is this all about? And then I am wondering if Vincent Madigan feels guilty. Maybe he is doing this out of guilt. And what could he feel guilty for? Why on earth would he feel so guilty that he would have anything to do with this Arias woman? Maybe he has hurt her in some way? Maybe he feels guilty because he has hurt her or harmed her in some way. I am wondering if this could be it, no? And what could that be? How could he know this woman? And then I am thinking that maybe he didn’t hurt this woman directly, but perhaps someone she knew. Someone she cared for. Someone like a husband or a sister or a brother . . . or maybe a child, Vincent? Could Vincent Madigan feel guilty because he did something that hurt her child? The one in the hospital? The one that was in my house when my house was robbed and my money was taken and my nephew was killed? Could that be it, perhaps?”

Madigan could not speak. He could not breathe. There was nothing to say.

“Come, Vincent,” Sandià said, and he leveled the same .38 that he had used to kill Bryant at Madigan’s stomach. “Raise your hands slowly above your head.”

Madigan complied.

“And now, with your left hand, take out your gun. Hold it with your fingertips, nothing else, and drop it behind you.”

Madigan did as he was asked.

The gun clattered heavily into the sink.

“Walk forward,” Sandià said.

Madigan took two steps.

“Raise your pants’ leg, each side . . . Show me if you have an ankle holster.”

Madigan showed him. There was nothing.

Sandià stepped to the side. He waved the gun, indicated that Madigan should step into the front room.

Madigan did as he was instructed, knowing what he would see when he walked in there, and he could not bear to imagine what she would be feeling.

She was there—Isabella Arias—gagged, bound to a chair, her eyes wide, disbelieving, and Madigan right there in front of her, and she’d heard everything that Sandià had said, and—more important—the lack of denial from Madigan.

Madigan’s expression said all that needed to be said.

He could not hide the truth from her.

He had been the one to rob the Sandià house, and irrespective of whether he had been the one to pull the trigger, he had still been there when her daughter was shot.

And if he had been there in the house, then he had been the one to kill the three associates and leave their bodies in the storage unit.

And then Madigan saw the money.

More than a hundred grand, right there on the floor, money that had come from beneath the floorboards upstairs.

“Hard to face sometimes,” Sandià said. “Isn’t it? The truth, I mean. Sometimes it is just so hard to face.”

Isabella Arias just stared at Vincent Madigan.

He looked away. He felt sick, ashamed. He felt like nothing.

“And people are just so unimaginative when it comes to finding places to hide their secrets, Vincent. I am disappointed in you. I thought you were a man of greater vision. Under the floorboards? Come on, seriously.” Sandià shook his head. “You are a smart man . . . Or maybe I should say you
were
a smart man, because you just ran out of smarts and you just ran out of future . . .”

Madigan opened his mouth to speak. He wanted to explain himself—not to Sandià, but to Isabella.

“I don’t want to hear you lie, Vincent,” Sandià said. “I figure you either respect or fear me sufficiently by now to not insult me with any more lies . . .”

Madigan was suddenly without words, once again speechless.

There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. Just as he had told Bryant, his own actions had brought him here and he had to face responsibility for the consequences. Perhaps his arrival in hell would not be so far behind Bryant’s.

He thought of Cassie, of the car she would never get. He thought of Lucy and Tom, of Adam, of Angela and Ivonne and Catherine . . .

He thought of how he had met all of their expectations, satisfied all their doubts, proved them all right . . .

But in that moment it was Isabella Arias that he cared about, her viewpoint, her thoughts and feelings, and he did not know why . . . Perhaps because she had never believed him anything other than trustworthy and honest. Because she had believed him someone other than who he really was. Because she had given him a single, simple chance to get it right, to make it good, and he had failed . . .

Perhaps because of this.

“The question for me,” Sandià said, “is who to kill first. You are both going to die, and you are both going to die in the next minute, and I am wondering if you should see her die, Vincent, or if I should let your death be the last thing she sees . . .” Sandià weighed the .38 in his hand. “Oh, and one further thing, Vincent . . . And this is just to recompense you for the death of my nephew. I want you to see this woman’s face now as I tell her that I will kill her daughter too. There is no doubt here. I want everyone present to be completely aware of what I am saying . . .”

Isabella Arias—her eyes wide, the sound from behind the gag one of tortured anguish—wrestled against her ties much as Bryant had.

“For the trouble Vincent Madigan has caused me, I am going to kill Melissa Arias. I am going to wait until she is released from the hospital, and then I will take her. I will cut off her pretty little head. I will smash her fragile little body to pieces and I will burn whatever remains until there is nothing. And this I will do because of the betrayal that Vincent Madigan has brought upon me. This I want you to understand and know.”

“Dario,” Madigan said. “There is no reason to kill the child . . .”

Sandià swept his arm wide, the gun caught the side of Madigan’s face, and he fell backward. Blood erupted from his torn lip. He was dazed, sick, and he stayed down for a moment. As he tried to get up again, Sandià let fly with a kick to Madigan’s shoulder.

Madigan went down again, stayed down, and lay there silently.

“There is
one
reason to kill the child,” Sandià said, “and that reason is you, Vincent. That reason is
you
. This is now personal, believe me. Just like Valderas, just like Bryant. I rely on people and they fuck things up. I relied on you, Vincent, and look where we are now. You can have the best people in the world, but sometimes you just have to make sure it gets done by doing it yourself.”

Sandià turned back to Isabella. “I am going to shoot this woman in the face, Vincent. I am going to shoot her in the fucking face, and you are going to watch me do it. Then I am going to shoot you, and then I am going to kill her daughter, and this thing will be done. I will have my money back, the death of my nephew will be revenged, and you and Bryant will be in hell where you belong . . .”

Sandià raised the gun. He cocked the hammer. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Isabella screamed through the gag, and the sound was one of unlimited anguish and terror, not only for her own life, but for the life of her daughter.