Crooked (15 page)

C h a p t e r                           2 2

 
B
arney’s fingers throbbed, his heart pounding as the titanic humpbacked Hell Gate Bridge drifted overhead. The glitter of the Triborough Bridge lay just ahead. It was like navigating a space capsule around intergalactic mother ships.

“I’m coming home, Nicasia, coming home.” Since the night before, when he’d seen her silhouetted in the porch light, that had become his mantra.

On the boat with Alvin, at slack tide, Hell Gate Channel had seemed rather tame. But night and a dropping tide had transformed the channel into a roar of unseen serpents. Barney’s eyes burned with the river’s myriad smoky reflections from factories on Hallet’s Point, the FDR Drive, and Shore Boulevard. He blinked hard, searching for the flashing red beacon of Hog Back Reef in the black void that loomed beyond the bright lights of the Triborough Bridge. It was supposed to be close by on his right, just past Negro Point. But the aft red and green lights of oil barges intermixed with the red and green beacons, which were further cluttered with the flicker of distant traffic lights on East End Avenue.

Were the barges standing still? Were they moving toward or away from him? The tide’s audible draw clawed at the
Devil Dog
’s hull, the cold night tingling with the roar of tortured fathoms and the sucking, hissing sound of whirlpools and eddies.

Barney’s mind swelled with images from Hell Gate’s historical litany of treacherous and unforgiving power. And yet here he was, in the dark, in a boat, piloting the channel for only the second time. His inclination was to pull out of the fast-flowing channel, away from the big ships and toward the shore of Ward’s Island, toward the river’s kinder currents where he might stand a chance of swimming to shore if the
Devil Dog
fetched up on Heel Tap, Big Annie, or Holmes Rock. But he’d stood on shore there and seen the jagged lurking rocks. That same inclination had been the ruin of many a ship. So he throttled back and attempted to coast through the channel as slowly as possible. Completely disoriented, Barney couldn’t be absolutely sure where he was, except that he was in the jaws of Hell Gate.

Well, it was all or nothing now, no turning back.

“Hog’s Back.” Barney’s eyes flashed at the light, imagining that the rhythmic splash was river against the rocks. He spun the wheel.

“Red Right Returning.” He pointed the boat for a red light to his right, trying to give what he assumed was Hog’s Back Beacon a wide berth.

The
Devil Dog
hit an eddy spinning off a bridge pier, and Barney was suddenly looking back upriver, sliding backward. He spun the
Devil Dog
about, his eyes dilating as the boat came to bear on the looming hull of a tanker. The ship’s struggling engine churned the river with the determined chop of impending demolition.

Sweat fairly jumped off his brow as he cut the wheel in the other direction and throttled in a circle away from the tanker. Another eddy twirled the
Devil Dog
toward an approaching light—the tanker’s tug. A warning blast sounded from the tug, and Barney whirled the boat back upriver, throttle pushed full. He’d drifted much farther toward Hallet’s Point than he’d realized, mistaking the red bow light of the tanker as Hog’s Back. In a wild burst of water, Barney cut across the bow of the tanker, which passed at a pebble’s throw to his left.

“Red Right Return,” Barney fairly cursed. “Nobody told me there was a red light on the bow of every boat on the river.”

When the tanker and its wake passed, Barney was again in the dark, panting with exasperation. Dead ahead, the sparkling line of the FDR Drive was blotted out and he suddenly realized where he must be.

“Mill Reef.” Barney squinted at the shadow ahead, looking upriver to where a thin bridge was emerging from behind Ward’s Island. He spun the wheel and steered the
Devil Dog
back toward the materializing bridge, which he recognized as the Harlem River footbridge. Just beyond that was his destination. He opened up the twin Mercs, figuring the less time spent in Hell Gate the better.

Once in the Harlem River, his way was brightly lit by the FDR Drive, though he was still leery of getting too close to Ward’s Island. As the grim hulk of the Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital passed on the right, he gently motored his craft into a shallow bay and up to a dilapidated stone seawall adjacent to the Icahn Stadium overflow parking lot. Even though the boat was only a couple hundred feet from the drilling site, it was low enough that in the dark it wouldn’t be visible from there.

Barney collapsed into the torn captain’s seat. Pulling off his cap, his fingers trembled as they raked his wet locks. His jaw muscles ached from clenching, and his eyes were bloodshot from strain. He wondered if he had the pluck to attempt a return voyage, if that somehow became necessary. In truth, he wasn’t exactly sure how the whole thing would play out. His scheme was organic, flexible.

It was early yet, just about nine
PM
. So he went for the thermos of coffee, just to calm his nerves. A few sips later he realized he’d rather drink his coffee on dry land. He slipped a gangplank from his gunnel to the bulkhead and tromped through the thin blanket of crusty snow across the vast, empty stadium parking lot toward the lights of the Triborough Bridge looming ahead. Turning the corner of the stadium, he found the van Drummond had promised in front of the main entrance. The keys were under the back bumper, and he used them to unlock the back doors.

The equipment was all there, so he figured he might as well put some of his plan in action. He drove the van around back of the stadium, across the overflow parking lot, and parked next to the athletic field fence and a pile of fine gravel the stadium maintenance crews used to keep the runners’ track in shape. He plugged the collector into the generator, stood the open barrels in the van, and put one of the collector’s hoses into a barrel. Starting the generator, he proceeded to vacuum gravel from the pile into the barrels until they were all almost full. He then drove the barrels across the parking lot to the
Devil Dog
and used a hand truck to ferry them across the gangplank into the boat.

The plan in motion, Barney then drove the van to the drilling site and parked. Five minutes later, the Pazzos’ drill rig appeared under the Triborough Bridge and turned into the overflow lot. The rig backed into the drill site and Barney helped the Pazzos back it into place without driving into any trees.

“How come you got a van today, Barney?” Joey lit a Coleman lantern.

Sam started the rig’s generator, which coughed and gurgled to life.

“Borrowed it from a friend.” Before they could ask any more questions, Barney brought forward a rectangular black box and handed it to Sam. It was the box Drummond had given him.

Joey came over with the lantern. “Whoa.”

“Fuck.” Sam smiled.

“You guys want it? It was sitting in the parking lot, pretty as you please.” Barney eyed their reactions carefully.

“No way.” Sam frowned, closing the box and shoving it back into Barney’s arms. “That’s a hot gun.” He crunched back through the snow to the rig and began pushing levers.

“Whatever.” Barney walked to the edge of the light and threw the box and gun into the brush. When he turned back to the rig, he saw the brothers quickly look away from where the gun was tossed.

No sooner had they set up than the water frothing from the borehole vanished into the ground. The roller bit had punched into another void. Without a word, Sam screwed on a sampler and Joey manned the driving hammer. Fifteen minutes later, Joey was opening a sampling tube. Barney approached with the lantern.

“Looks like wood, some metal, some glass’n shit.” Joey sneered.

“An’ some gold,” Sam snorted sarcastically.

Barney’s eyes caught the buttery yellow glow of gold beads.

“Must be some of that brass’n shit you said we might find,” Joey said, tossing the contents on the ground.

“Must be.” Barney smiled. “Let’s start another hole, but case this one with PVC. No sense in going farther into that one, but if we don’t find anything in the others, maybe we’ll come back and drill down.”

Barney saw the Pazzos exchange a furtive glance before Joey asked: “How will we know when we find what we’re lookin’ for?”

“Be cool if it were gold, huh?” Sam’s eyes strayed toward the darkness where the gun lay.

“That’s why I’m here. I’ll know what we’re looking for when I see it.”

While gold in the form of bars is eminently stackable and transportable, it was not always practical. Not in the 1800s, anyway. For accounting and transaction purposes, it was sometimes desirable to measure out precise quantities of gold. The raw material (a combination of flakes and nuggets) was sloppy and awkward to handle. Pouring a steady stream of molten gold into water, however, was a quick way to reduce the metal into fairly uniform pellets, which was the form preferred by many East Coast banks when obtaining gold from California in the days before a West Coast assayer’s office was established. Gold pellets prevented any monkey business like lead-filled bars or bars of nonuniform karat.

As per the Newcastle Warranty report, Section Seven, “Medium of Exchange,” the
Bunker Hill
’s hold had been loaded with approximately 250 burlap bags of gold pellets.

C h a p t e r                           2 3

 
N
icholas picked a desolate parking lot on the far side of Randall’s Island from Little Hell Gate, directly under the noisy Harlem River span of the Triborough Bridge. He stood next to his rental car and a dirty mountain of snow, an old tweed overcoat buttoned tight to his neck. Cold as the night was, and with such short hair, he should have worn a hat. But just as he didn’t use umbrellas, he didn’t wear hats either. Besides, he hardly felt the cold.

I don’t want you coming around anymore. Ever.

It was over. No more Mel. Easy come, easy go.

I don’t want you coming around anymore. Ever.

Over and over and over. Time to go AWOL, Nicholas, so go, already. But the exchange with Mel played like a looped tape.

What was it about Mel? Why was she special? If Maureen had said
adios,
he would have shrugged it off. Was it because she’d rebuffed him? That had something to do with it. Much more than that, he couldn’t fathom. He was still uncomfortable with some of the things he’d said.

I don’t have what you’re looking for. I wish I did.

I’d be here for you.

“Let it go, you idiot,” he growled to himself. He needed a clear head for what was afoot.

Fifteen minutes before he was supposed to meet Maureen on the other side of the island, and just as he’d begun to wonder whether BB had stood him up, a cab curved down the ramp from the bridge. It was obscured from sight by buildings and bridge abutments, then reappeared coming his way. It stopped on the main road, discharged a passenger, and sped off.

It wasn’t BB, which was not necessarily a surprise. But Nicholas was surprised to recognize the approaching silhouette.

“Of course,” he admonished himself, rolling his eyes.

Shifting the carpetbag from one hand to the other, the Chinese gent in the porkpie hat stepped up to Nicholas and scrutinized him. The same gentleman Nicholas had run into in Dr. Bagby’s Chinatown vestibule. Of course: it was this guy who’d stolen the painting from Dr. Bagby. He’d had
Trampoline Nude, 1972
in his carpetbag. The bag Nicholas had handed back to him. The painting had been right in his hand and he hadn’t even realized it.

“You have the painting, yes?” Porkpie smiled, displaying a big gold bicuspid.

“Yes, in the trunk.” Nicholas eyed the loose sway of the carpetbag. That night in Bagby’s vestibule, Porkpie had had more than the painting in that bag. He’d had whatever he’d used to kill Bagby. Probably still did. “Got the money?”

Porkpie pulled a bank check from his sleeve. “Must see painting.” That gold tooth flashed again like Satan’s wink.

“Right.” Nicholas nodded approvingly at the check. “Let’s get the painting, then.” Producing the keys, he turned his back on Porkpie and shuddered. Car tires thrummed overhead on the bridge deck.

Porkpie drifted behind him and out of his peripheral vision. But the car was carefully positioned, and streetlamps from the bridge ramp cast Porkpie’s shadow on the trunk as he drew near. Just as soon as Nicholas popped the trunk lock, the transmitter in his ear buzzed, and H said:

“Watch it!”

There was a whoosh that burst into a bang when it connected with the trunk lid; Nicholas wheeled, stumbled, and fell to the ground off to the right. Porkpie regrouped immediately.

“Just say the word and I’ll take him down with one shot,” H said in Nicholas’s ear as Porkpie ran at him with the butt of a steel pool cue. But Nicholas’s hand was already on the gun in his overcoat pocket.

An explosion in Nicholas’s coat pocket stopped Porkpie in his tracks. Dropping the pool cue, he pawed his shirtfront, looking for blood, for the hole where the bullet hit him. Finding none, he looked toward Nicholas. Nicholas had shot himself by accident.

Behind a cloud of blue smoke, Nicholas was clawing at his overcoat and gasping. Buttons popped and rolled on the ground as he flung open his coat, exposing a gush of gore that splashed to the pavement.

“Oh God, oh God,” he muttered, groping the air with one hand. The other hand was busy trying to put out the growing fire in his coat lining.

Porkpie goggled Nicholas’s supine, writhing form, then furtively glanced at the crate in the trunk. With his eyes back on Nicholas, he pulled the keys from the trunk and tried to slam the lid closed. The damage from the cue prevented it from latching.

Time for the clincher. Nicholas lurched up, then bit down hard, and blood coursed from his mouth. Like one of Peter Cushing’s better performances, he gasped and fell back to the ground slowly, one hand surreptitiously splashing blood on the fire in his coat lining.

“Holy cow,” Porkpie spat, shaking his head at Nicholas as he snatched the bank check and pool cue from the ground. Then he climbed into Nicholas’s rental car and sped away, the trunk lid bouncing open and shut as he went.

Nicholas had intended to count to one hundred, but he got as far as thirty before wrenching off his coat and running for the snow pile. Pressing a ball of snow to the burn on his thigh, he limped back to his smoking coat and removed the transmitter.

“You got him?” Nicholas turned and spat the spent blood cartridges from his mouth.

“Can’t miss him, the trunk open like that. Right on his tail, my friend. You OK?”

“Yeah, H, I’m OK. Think you put enough blood in that pack? It was like the Hoover Dam bursting from my gut. Sure this isn’t the first time you rigged this setup?”

“Done it hundreds of times,” H said flippantly.

“And did you set a hundred coats on fire? Mine’s still burning.” Nicholas retrieved a change of clothes from a duffel bag he’d hidden in a pile of snow.

“Mr. Bitch N. Moan. I gotta go, cover the man here. Call later.”

By the time Nicholas had his shirt off, he was beginning to get a serious chill. And standing around in boxer shorts in February was no day in Cancún. He tore the duct-taped charge and blood pack off his stomach and threw it aside. Dressed and in his good tweed overcoat, he was still shivering uncontrollably. So he took a couple nips of Macallan from a flask to warm him and hustled his way toward the stadium.

I don’t want you coming around anymore. Ever.

Nicholas hissed to himself: “Travel light.”

A camera with a telephoto lens was clamped to the steering wheel, and Maureen swung it away from the Argentine fox’s red pickup to the lamp glow way down by the bridge. She zoomed in as tight as she could and snapped off another photo for the hell of it. Even if she didn’t bring Swires in, she could at least prove she’d located him. That was the brand of thoroughness, the kind of professionalism, that Nicholas never seemed to practice. Maureen didn’t even think he owned a camera. What kind of partner would he make?

“He’s not even a PI, for Christ sake,” she whispered to herself. “But the asshole does make a lot of money.”

And here he was, getting in on the passenger side.

The dome light was disconnected, so Nicholas sat down on a pile of newspaper and an apple. He grimaced and handed Maureen the apple. “What’s up?”

“You’re late. You got dirt or something on your face.” She grabbed him by the chin. “What you been up to?”

“One case at a time, kiddo.” He pulled his head away and wiped at his jaw with a hanky. “What’s coming in over your spy scope?” He leaned over and put an eye to the camera.

“Nicholas, this looks like blood all over the back of your head!” She pulled a wad of napkins from the dash and mopped his hair.

“Would you stop? It’s fake blood. I can’t see with you pushing on my…”

“OK, OK…”

“Who else but Barney and Athenian sea captains wear those Greek fisherman caps these days? Sure looks like Barney from here. What’s he doing?”

Maureen shrugged.

“About an hour ago, a drill rig drove away from here. Barney made like he was leaving, too, then he pulled the van back around and stuck that thing in a hole in the ground. Not for nothing, Nicholas, but your elbow is puttin’ my leg to sleep here.” Odd. Nicholas was in her lap without so much as stroking her thigh. Which reminded her that Brady hadn’t called.
Shit.

Nicholas took his eye from the camera and settled back into his own seat. “I saw the drill rig parked by the ramp over there. Two guys smoking a joint. So they haven’t really left yet.” He squinted off into the distance. “It looks to me like Barney’s filling barrels with whatever is down in the hole.”

Maureen’s cell rang and her heart skipped a beat. She’d been waiting all day for it to ring. For Brady. It wasn’t so much that she liked him—oh, he was handsome enough. Like a teenager, she was just thrilled that somebody “doable” had taken notice of her. And like a teenager, the prospect, the anticipation, of him calling, had made it very important that he did. But who the hell could it be at eleven thirty? Not Brady. Maybe her kid brother was in a jam. The number was blocked.

“McNary?”

Her heart froze. Only a cop would call a woman by her last name. “Brady?”

“Sorry for the late hour, and not calling sooner. Things got crazy here at the precinct. You know how it is.”

Nicholas gave her a sidelong glance. “Maureen, we have business. Better lose that call.

“It’s OK, Brady. I had another engagement tonight.” Maureen was conscious that she was sounding too businesslike—a cop’s reflex when talking to another cop. So she softened the tone. “I’d forgotten about dinner anyway.”

There was a pause on the other end.

“Dinner?” Nicholas shot her another sidelong glance.

“No excuse,” Brady said. “A man calls when he says he will.”

“So, I guess you owe me one?” Maureen fairly purred.

“What is this? You talking to Moondoggie?” Nicholas grimaced. “Look, Gidget, could you please hang up and get back to what we’re doing?”

“Is that your date?” Brady asked flatly.

“No, just a friend.” Of course, she said it like she was covering. Never too soon to use jealousy to your advantage. “I’m being rude, so I should get off the phone.”

“But I owe you one.” Brady said that just the way she hoped he would—with a tinge, just a tinge, of desperation. “I’m off duty tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow? I’ll have to check and don’t have my calendar. Call me tomorrow?”

“OK, I will.” Brady sounded determined. “Good night, Maureen.”

“Good night…” She didn’t remember his first name. He’d hung up anyway.

“Ahem?” Nicholas cleared his throat, pointing out the window. “Yoo-hoo, Gidget? We’ve got some company. Look over there. Here, use the binoculars.”

Maureen suppressed a smile as she put the binoculars to her eyes.
He called.

“That’s the Argentine woman. She’s got a huge fox coat, really gorgeous. Works for Drummond, and she’s the one who went to Costa Rica.” Maureen had never owned a fur coat or been to the tropics. Daytona Beach didn’t seem to count. She found herself slipping into a speed fantasy about going to Jamaica with Brady.

“I remember. The slinky Latin number. So she’s watching Barney, to make sure he does what he’s supposed to do for Drummond. Swires has got himself quite an audience. Us, her, and the drillers.”

Nicholas’s smile faded suddenly. “I wonder if he knows?”

Then he seemed to have another thought. He pulled out his cell phone, dialed, and waited. “Ozzy? You can call the cops now.”

Maureen gazed out the window.
He called.

The drill rig sat empty near the ramp up to the Triborough. The Pazzo brothers had gone to see what was what.

“It’s like he’s vacuuming stuff outta the hole, Sam!” Joey peeled back into the shadow of the bridge pier. “Think he’s, like, pullin’ cheese outta the ground?”

“Cheese, Joey?” Sam sneered. “Just shuddup and lemme think about this a sec, OK?”

Moments later, Sam snapped his fingers and smiled.

“That list of gold prices!”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you get it? That brass we found?”

“You mean it was real fuckin’…”

Sam’s eyes twinkled in the shadow. “Fuckin’ gold, Joey!”

“How we gonna get it?”

“Same way we play hockey.”