Mean Business on North Ganson Street (35 page)

Crunching footfalls sounded behind the truck. The duffel bag thudded against the bottom of the flatbed, shaking the vehicle, and Dominic appeared outside the passenger window. As he opened the door, the clouds shifted, and the landscape turned gray.

The big fellow slid across the bench into the middle of the cab. Most of his bandages had been removed by the crash and the blizzard, and for the first time, the detective saw the collection of thick stitches, dark scabs, and pale scars that adorned his saturnine face.

Metal clanked as the cardboard box landed in the flatbed, and soon, Tackley climbed into the vehicle, wiping snow from his silver hair, which had acquired a dark red streak above his left eyebrow.

Bettinger shifted into gear. The truck rolled forward, carrying three policemen and a wide assortment of unkind tools.

“How far are the Heaps?”

“Couple of miles.” Dominic ripped a stitch from his face and discarded it.

“Leave that alone,” remarked Tackley.

“It was buggin' me.”

“Leave it alone.”

At a speed of fifty miles an hour, the pickup truck continued north. Bettinger hoped to reach the Heaps before the battle against nature was lost.

Trembling wipers shoved snow off of the glass, revealing a series of dead condominiums.

“Remember when they was buildin' those?” Dominic asked Tackley.

“Yeah.”

“Like a different world back then.”

“It was a different world back then.”

An unanswered question returned to Bettinger's mind, and he glanced at his passengers. “How did you get Sebastian to drop the lawsuit?”

Dominic threw a frown. “What the fuck does that matter now?”

“It matters because I want to know.” The detective's face and fists hardened. “And if you say it's none of my business, I'll break your fucking teeth.”

A heavy silence filled the cab of the truck.

Bettinger circumvented a dip in the road, surprised by the threat that had leapt from his mouth, but also certain that he could and would commit the declared act of violence. An important part of his life was gone, and an angry, grieving entity that could usurp rational thought had filled the void.

The windshield wipers squeaked.

Shifting in his seat, Dominic looked at Tackley, who kept his eyes on the road.

“You care?” inquired the big fellow.

Snow turned the windshield into a pane of glaucoma, and soon, the shuddering wipers swept it clean.

The mottled man shrugged.

“Okay.” Dominic glanced at Bettinger and then returned his gaze to the blizzard. “When Sebastian came out of his coma, he filed charges against us. We told him we'd bust up his operations—all of them—unless he dropped the suit, but he didn't care. We closed them down, and Sebastian kept on talkin' with his lawyers. Week after that, we told him we'd go after his associates' operations unless he dropped the suit, but he didn't care 'bout that neither. Nigga just wanted to take us down.” The big fellow cracked his thick knuckles and shook his head. “This motherfucker got a cop—our friend—tortured to death, and there was no fuckin' way he was gonna take our badges and win.”

Bettinger could not see more than sixty feet ahead of the truck. Anything that appeared in the middle of the road would be narrowly avoided or run over.

Dominic glanced at Tackley and returned his gaze to the storm. “So we kidnapped Sebastian's sister and girlfriend—took them to a place in the fringe. Then we went and visited him—told him the kinds of things that would happen if he took us to court.”

Bettinger clenched his fists. “Did you tell him they would be raped?”

“Yeah. And we had some abortion tools—this was before Melissa had her miscarriage. But we wouldn't've done any of that stuff to them—it was just scare tactics.”

The detective recognized the strategy. “Like you did with Kimmy?”

“Who?”

“Melissa's roommate.”

“Like with her.”

“Did Melissa lose her child—Sebastian's, I'm assuming—while you had her?”

“Accidentally.”

“Fucking Jesus Christ,” exclaimed Bettinger. There was a time—not very long ago—when he would have shot or arrested such men. Now, they seemed to be his allies.

“We didn't do anything but tie her up and scare her,” defended Dominic. “It was just talk.”

“Talk can be enough.” Bettinger tried not to think about how his own poorly chosen words had cost him his job in Arizona and affected his family. “You didn't expect some sort of retaliation after he dropped the suit?”

“Sebastian was scared. He knew what would happen if he tried to hit back.”

The detective saw a suspicious lump in the road and dialed the wheel clockwise. Shaking, the weary vehicle fought its way through the elements.

“And what happened,” the big fellow added, “all this we're dealing with right now, ain't no ‘retaliation.' It's fuckin' insanity.”

“Not to Sebastian.”

The truck lurched, fishtailing. Dominic and Tackley buckled their seat belts, and Bettinger stomped the gas. Spinning rubber struck dry powder, and the vehicle surged, once again under control.

“It's still fucking insane,” added the big fellow. “What he did.”

“You crippled him, and while he was in the hospital, adjusting to life with a diaper and a wheelchair and one lung, you killed his unborn child and threatened to rape his loved ones.” Bettinger glared at his passengers. “Is there a sane reaction to something like that? When everything you care about is threatened or destroyed by a group of men who are empowered by the state?”

“He should've come at us directly.”

“And have the entire precinct pick up where you left off?”

Dominic shrugged, fingering the collection of scars that the shotgun pellets had scored into his left cheek.

“You want to offer us another critique?” Tackley asked Bettinger. “Tell us what a smart guy like you would've done?” The mottled man's voice was even, but his blue eyes were baleful.

Bettinger avoided a shadow in the road that might have been a corneal imperfection. “There's no point. We all want the same thing. Find Sebastian, get the names of the gunmen, kill Sebastian.”

“That's it.”

“I'll want a confirmation that he's responsible before we kill him.”

“You'll get a confession.”

“And the women?”

“They facilitated mass murder.” Tackley's reply was cold and definitive.

“Accomplices,” added Dominic.

Bettinger did not dispute these statements, but he doubted that he could shoot a woman in any situation other than one of self-defense.

It was clear that his associates had no such limitations.

Snow poured down, obscuring the abandoned concrete world as the pickup truck sped north.

Dominic plucked another wire from his face. Blood ran from the wound over sutures and scabs until it reached his chin, where it swelled like a tear.

Tires boomed. The policemen jerked forward, and seat belts snapped taut. A drop of blood spattered the windshield.

The rumbling world scrolled east.

Metal grated against concrete as the vehicle skidded, trailing a wake of slush. Braced, the detective and his associates waited for impact.

A brick wall pounded the hood. Bettinger's fractured ribs cracked, and his forehead bounced off of the steering wheel. Somebody's blood spattered the glass.

Suddenly, the truck was still.

The blizzard rushed in through the shattered windshield, and steam rose from the hood.

Leaning back, the detective looked at his passengers, who were both unbuckling their seat belts.

“We're close to the Heaps,” Dominic said as he slid across the bench and followed Tackley outside.

Bettinger shut off the engine, donned his ballistic apparel, holstered his silencer-fitted guns, pocketed his dog whistle, zipped up his parka, opened the door, and entered the blizzard. Hail rattled upon the devil mask that covered his face.

 

XLVIII

The Heaps

Tackley withdrew a couple of shiny items from the cardboard box and deposited them in the duffel bag that was slung over Dominic's right shoulder.

“That mask fits,” the big fellow said when he saw the detective.

“Yeah.”

The mottled man pulled the zipper to its stop, and soon, he and his former partner donned ski masks and tactical vests.

Snow fell on the policemen as they abandoned the dead pickup truck.

Bettinger trudged north underneath the gray sky, ignoring the pain in his ribs. His boots disappeared in the white blanket, resurfaced, flinging white clumps, and then vanished again. It looked like fourteen inches of snow had fallen during the last two and a half hours.

On either side of the road loomed tall gray buildings that had been eroded by years and weather. The wind that blew through these rounded obelisks sounded resentful, if not hostile.

Bettinger's corduroys were wet and his shins were numb by the time he reached the next intersection. “How many blocks?” he asked his associates.

“Four or five.”

The masked policemen kicked furrows up Ganson Street. Upon a rooftop that was once an enclosed penthouse floor, turquoise toilets and matching bathtubs collected snow.

Something crunched, and Bettinger looked toward the noise.

Dominic lifted his left leg from the white blanket. Beige innards, brown ice, and gray-green feathers adhered to the bottom of his boot.

“I'm real fuckin' sick of these things.”

The trio reached the next intersection and circumvented a garbage bin that had been relocated by somebody into the middle of the road.

“Glad he didn't drive into that,” Dominic said to Tackley.

“Because the building was so soft?”

Bettinger noticed that the mottled man had a busted lip and a missing incisor.

The wind keened as it changed directions, and snow flew horizontally. Ice shot directly into the detective's eyes.

“How long's that been there?” asked Dominic. “Never seen it before.”

“I don't know,” replied Tackley.

Bettinger cleared the snow from his mask and looked north.

Lying on its side across Ganson Street was half of a high-rise building. Structural beams jutted from the massive, snow-blanketed obstruction like the ribs of a dead animal.

“How'd it get there?” asked the big fellow.

“Explosives.” The mottled man pointed at an upright building that had been diminished by half.

“Why? Keep people out?”

“Who knows why Heapers do anything.”

Boots sank in the powder and tossed white clumps. It soon became clear to the policemen that the toppled structure would preclude any further progress along Ganson Street.

“There's a way around?” asked Bettinger. His feet were numb, and his skin felt unnaturally tight, as if he were wearing a wetsuit.

Tackley motioned west with his left arm, and all three men trudged in that direction. Ice crunched, and the wind skirled. The weather was not a confluence of elements, but a cognitive and malicious thing that hated humans.

Bettinger's right boot slipped on a buried sheet of metal, and his broken ribs clicked. The pain forced a yell from his mouth and drove him to his knees.

Dominic glanced over. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Bettinger said as he rose to his feet.

Inexorably, he trudged.

Numbness overtook sensation in the detective's appendages, and he tried not to think about things like frostbite.

The policemen continued along the side street until they reached the next intersection. There, they turned north.

Bettinger looked ahead, but was unable to see the far end of the block through the dazzling white precipitation. The cold bit his exposed neck, and his numb feet alternately sank in the blanket and flung clumps. He knew for a fact that if Hell existed, it was not a place of warmth.

Winds skirled, sending a barrage of hard pellets directly at the detective. Ice crackled against his ballistic mask.

Reaching the end of the block, Bettinger finally saw the northern horizon. His first impression was that he was looking upon the largest junkyard in the world, a place where all of the buildings had been replaced by massive piles of rubble. The size of each of these cyclopean anthills varied (depending upon the number of bulldozed structures on that block), though the smallest ones were at least a hundred feet tall and half again as wide. Between these mountains of ruin were uneven roads that had leafless trees, automobile shells, and unidentifiable lumps.

Bettinger did not need to ask his associates if they had reached their destination.

Together, the masked policemen proceeded up the street and entered the Heaps.

Tackley motioned to the snow-covered ground. “Watch out for pits.”

“And bear traps,” added Dominic.

Two very unpleasant denouements occurred to the detective.

A 150-foot pile of rubble loomed on the right side of the street, mirroring its sibling across the way. Cellars, garbage chute receptacles, boiler rooms, laundry areas, and branching brick passageways sat below the ground, exposed to the sky by acts of demolition and the passage of time.

“How big're the Heaps?” asked Bettinger.

“Not sure.” Dominic brushed white epaulets from his shoulders. “Never been all the way.”

Boots crunched snow as the trio neared the end of the block.

The detective stopped, raised his mask, and withdrew his dog whistle. “Let's try it here.”

Pausing, the other men retrieved their instruments.

The policemen filled their lungs, stuck the mouthpieces between their lips, and blew. Jets of steam shot through the apertures, waggling in the cold like translucent tongues.

Bettinger ran out of air and removed the whistle from his mouth, as did Dominic and Tackley. Silently, they awaited a response.