Father's Day (25 page)

“Tell me something. You ain’t really lost, are you?”

“You catch on fast. Ok, who owns this place now?”

The driver reached down and tapped the outside of his door where the letters were stenciled on. “Trafficante Reclamation. Pretty big outfit.”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“Well, be careful. The kind of business they’re doing behind these walls now is bad news. Ain’t no cops come down here except to sleep. I seen guys come looking for trouble and they find them two weeks later floating downstream, if you know what I mean.”

“Hey, I’m outa here pal, nice talking to you.”

With a wave, the driver turned away. A blast of black smoke billowed from the twin exhaust pipes over the cab. The gears ground stubbornly and he roared away. He gave a quick burst of the air horn and a friendly wave. It sounded like one of those old ships in the bay rolling in through a heavy fog.

Lou circled around to the back of the building. A couple of two-ton trucks were backed up to the rear dock. Two young guys in dark green hooded sweatshirts were unloading the truck, carrying wooden crates in through a basement door. The metal doors were propped open, exposing a steep set of steps that descended into a black hole in the ground. It resembled an open grave. The boxes they were carrying seemed heavy and the two guys struggled with the weight. They looked like rats crawling into a sewer.

A car came slowly around the corner, leaving wide rubber “footprints” on the damp surface of the road. It was a long black Ford, an unmarked police car with lightly tinted windows. The headlights were like glowing white eyes. The car rolled slowly into the lot and parked against the wall. A man got out, slammed the door, and walked around the car toward a gray metal door. He fit a key into the lock and entered the dark building. It was Inspector Ray Boland.

Lou positioned his car behind the Dumpster, out of sight. He reclined the seat, slumped down into it and moved his hand slowly inside his jacket. He unsnapped the holster and caressed the handle of the gun. The blue steel had grown warm against his side. He eased the gun onto his lap and let it sit between his legs. Droplets of sweat ran from under his arm and dripped down his back. He controlled his breathing. Sarah put her hand on his knee, squeezed hard enough to let him know she was scared. He turned his head slowly toward her. Her eyes were closed.

The gun was still warm, sleeping against his leg. He held it loosely in one hand and wondered what he would have done if Ray Boland had pulled them over, discovered his old cop buddy with his boss’s wife as if they were about to elope. Lou couldn’t imagine killing a cop but doubted Boland would have the same reservations. Lou waited for the two guys to disappear down the stairs. He told Sarah to wait in the car.

Lou tugged on the cold metal handle of the warehouse door. It didn’t budge. He heard the echo of footsteps on the concrete floor receding inside. He took two steps back, as if he was preparing to kick the door in, and instead, stared up helplessly at the sprawling brick structure. There were no ground-floor windows he could access. He thought about going in through the roof. Making it onto the roof in one piece was the problem. Being an amateur burglar helped, being thirty pounds overweight didn’t.

He walked around in the dark, looking for a rain gutter to climb or a ledge to grab hold of. The front didn’t look much different than the back, except for twisted vines of green ivy that shrouded its facade and a sliding wrought-iron gate across the front door. The padlock was rusted shut. He walked to the opposite side, where the muddy river flowed silently behind the building. A log had been dragged to the bank, probably by some kids looking to sit by the water and contemplate their futures. Names were carved with a knife into the hard wood. Beer cans littered the ground. A circle of flat stones formed a burned-out fireplace between the trees and the water.

The earth had grown soft along the bank and his feet sunk an inch into the mud where the water had receded. There were places where the footprints had hardened into casts. Lou looked into the water and saw a mural of round smooth stones covered in a greenish slime. There was the remnant of a concrete retaining wall. It had cracked in half and crumbled partially into the
water. The current made a sound not unlike the traffic speeding along the highway.

A group of large electrical transformers sat against the wall, encapsulated in chain link, devoid of energy. The empty gray cylinders were attached to copper coils by thick black wires and looked as if they’d been created by some primitive civilization He gripped the chain-link fence with his fingers and pushed with his feet. It was a long, slow climb to the top. He hoisted himself over the fence, cutting his wrist on the sharp edge of a top link. From there he reached a window ledge. The window was closed but not locked.

The image of himself clinging to that fence was one Lou had become familiar with, an image he’d seen in a recurring dream that had played in his sleeping mind since childhood. In the dream, he’d been running, looking over his shoulder at some unknown pursuer, grabbing at a fence, trying to make his legs move faster but losing ground. That was all he ever remembered of the dream, the running and the fence. He’d never seen the face of the man chasing him. He’d always awakened in a cold sweat, the house silent except for the hum of the furnace in the winter and the wind through the open windows in the summer.

He hooked his fingertips on the coarse brick and pulled himself up until he was kneeling on the ledge, pushing against the thick paneled glass. The hinge was stiff and rusty. It opened with a sad groan. He leaned in and was looking at a fifteen-foot drop. There was no sound.

He maneuvered through the window frame, sat on the inside ledge, and jumped down. He held his breath until he hit the floor. It seemed like forever. He rolled like a paratrooper and got to his feet. He felt his way through the building, as if it were a maze. He slid between metal racks stacked with rolls of carpet. The racks were high and bolted to the floor, the aisles narrow. The dust was thick in the still air and there was a heavy chemical
smell, like paint thinner or glue. He peered out the back of the building, above where the men were still unloading the trucks. There were piles of greasy auto parts, used car batteries stacked on pallets, red toolboxes wheeled into a crooked row, three antique cars parked side by side under blue tarps, and a motor lift with chains hanging to the floor. A stacked and packed calendar was pinned up on a cork bulletin board near two large garage doors. He could smell stale oil and gasoline.

There was light in the building coming from far ahead of him and he followed it. The outline of his shadow against the dusty concrete floor darkened and grew longer as he advanced, a cold sweat forming on the back of his neck. A long narrow staircase led to a loft where a row of offices looked out onto what once might have been a factory floor. Even in the dark, the stairs looked wet with silver paint. Square picture windows of thick plate glass framed each office, where the boss might have stood, looking down at his employees. Only one light was on.

He crept quietly up the stairs. He saw Maggie, on a chair in a room, with Boland leaning on the table in front of her, saying something, but Lou couldn’t make out what it was. He needed to move fast while he only had Boland to deal with.

He burst through the door, holding the gun in two hands at about eye-level. Boland spun, reaching for his own gun in a holster on his hip, but Lou had already taken aim at Boland’s chest. Boland froze and then showed Lou the open palms of his hands in a gesture of mock surrender.

“Turn around, Ray, and put your hands on the table. You remember the drill.”

Maggie let out a sigh of relief as if she’d been holding her breath throughout the entire ordeal. Lou extricated Boland’s gun and slid it under his belt. It was a silver automatic, a forty-five, the kind of gun that could tear a man up from the inside. It fired a bullet that expanded to the size of a silver dollar and left
a bigger hole on the way out than it did going in. Once disarmed, Boland turned to face him.

“This is about as stupid a move as you’ve ever pulled, Lou. We didn’t want your daughter. You gave us no choice. You’re not giving us a choice now. You may walk out of here, but how long you think you’re going to be walking around. Where you going? Dumb, that’s what you are, Lou.”

Lou pointed to the door with the gun. “Move.”

“Now, I’m going with you?”

They commenced a slow descent on the narrow staircase, Maggie behind her father and Boland two steps ahead.

“I haven’t decided what to do with you, yet.”

At the bottom of the stairs, it became perceptibly darker, and Boland paused, seeing that Lou was trying to get his bearings, unsure of the quickest way out.

“Well, you better make up your mind soon.”

The two guys from the loading dock were coming toward them. They were pushing Sarah along in front of them and they had guns in their hands. They were about thirty yards away and closing fast. Lou spun Maggie behind him as he took a step closer to Ray Boland and stuck the gun in his side.

“Tell them to back off, Ray, or I guarantee, you’ll be the first one to get it.”

Boland raised his hand and called out, “Hold it, guys. Stay where you are.”

Boland turned his eyes toward Lou while the two men held their guns pointed at the floor, Sarah squeezed between them. “What now, Lou? You seem to be calling the shots.”

“Tell them to send Sarah over here.”

“You ever notice, when most guys fuck up, it’s over a woman. Not
just
you, Klein. Most guys. I guess, I’m just lucky, was never the sentimental type.” He waved his hand again, gesturing with a flick of his finger. “Send over the woman!”

The two men released Sarah’s arms simultaneously and she ran toward Lou, her heels ticking rapidly on the floor.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry, Lou, I’m sorry! I got worried and came looking for you and these two guys saw me.”

Sarah was breathing heavily, gulping air between words, and just as she finished the sentence, Boland reached for the gun in Lou’s hand. He got hold of Lou’s wrist, and before Lou could pull away, Boland hit him just below the right ear. Lou’s head spun around and his body followed. The gun fell from his hand and he went down onto his back like a ton of bricks. Boland kicked him twice in the ribs and bent to pick up the gun.

Lou recovered quickly and charged Boland, planting a shoulder deep into his solar plexus. It drove him back, took the air out of his lungs, and dropped him flat on his back. Boland, who had held onto the gun, fired blindly as he went down.

Lou pushed Maggie behind the metal staircase and pulled out the forty-five. Boland’s men heard the shot and opened fire. Lou returned fire and buried two shots into the first man’s chest. Boland scrambled for cover. Sarah had joined Maggie under the stairs. Lou braced himself behind on an iron beam and waited for the other man to make a move. His ears were ringing from the blasts. He kept Boland pinned down with two more shots, knowing he now had only five bullets left in the gun. He needed to make each one count.

The other gunman had climbed to the top of one of the metal racks, hoping to get a clear shot. Boland was keeping Lou distracted with a few shots of his own but they didn’t seem to be aimed in Lou’s direction. Boland was shooting at a group of rusted metal canisters against the far wall. Lou turned and saw the other man taking aim from the top rack. Before he could pull the trigger, an explosion ripped through the cavernous factory, bringing the man plummeting to the floor.

Lou grabbed Maggie and Sarah and ran for the exit. Another
explosion followed and Lou felt the heat from the fireball crawling up his back. Boland was already outside. The third explosion blew out a row of windows, as heavy black smoke poured from the burning structure. Maggie and Sarah crashed through the door with Lou at their heels, and they didn’t stop running until they were across the parking lot. They collapsed to the ground, coughing and spitting, their eyes burning, their faces black with soot. Lou stood over them, choking spasmodically as he tried to expel the smoke from his lungs.

Boland’s car suddenly roared to life, its tires spinning, spitting gravel across the slick asphalt. The wheels screeched and spun as the car careened across the parking lot, heading right toward them. Lou grabbed Maggie and Sarah by the arms and dragged them out of the way as the speeding car flew past and fishtailed onto the street. Boland’s foot never came off the accelerator and the vehicle continued to pick up speed. It veered wildly out of control, caught a high curb, and hit a pole.

The pole cracked in two, snapping the live wires overhead, a shower of sparks raining down. The laceration across Boland’s forehead, from where it hit the windshield, dripped blood into his eyes and his face instantly began to swell.

He stepped casually from the mangled wreck like a pedestrian who had a few too many drinks and was electrocuted as soon as his feet touched the ground. He stiffened and fell as the voltage traveled through his body. He twitched reflexively, a hazy smoke rising off him, his face flat against the road, his blood mixing with the dirt and water and ice. The standing water bubbled as the electrical current found a path back through the water, completing the circuit. There was nothing anyone could have done.

Sirens wailed in the distance. People nearby must have heard the explosions or seen the smoke and dialed nine-one-one. Calls would be coming in from motorists on cell phones. They’d slow down enough to gape at the billowing smoke, maybe get a
glimpse of a dead body and satisfy their morbid curiosity. More windows broke under the extreme heat and the thick black smoke billowed into the sky. The old warehouse was burning fast, from the inside out. Soon, there would be nothing left of it but a brick shell. A police car whipped into the lot, its overhead lights on and no siren.

A six-foot-tall female cop stepped out of the car and came toward them with a large black pistol in her hand. She wore a navy blue uniform with three gold stripes on her arm. Her boots were almost to her knees and her hat was on. Most cops hated to wear their hats. As she drew closer, Lou could see the sharp crease in her trousers and the fresh shine on her boots. She wore the cap low on her forehead and the visor shielded her eyes. A dark brown braided ponytail hung down tightly behind her neck and the bullet proof vest under her uniform shirt masked any other signs of her femininity.