Dark Harbor (33 page)
“D
O YOU KNOW how
to handle a gun?” Kozlowski asked Loring.
He nodded. “I was certified when I was with the FBI.”
Kozlowski reached down to his ankle holster and pried loose a snub-nosed .38.
“I’m sorry to take your spare piece,” Loring said.
“No problem, that’s why they call it a spare,” Kozlowski replied.
They were standing with Flaherty at the foot of the wooden fence separating the access road to Fort Independence from the shipyard. The fence was tall—clearly meant to discourage unwanted visitors—but hardly insurmountable. There was no barbed wire at the top, and it was only eight feet high. It seemed that aesthetics were the primary purpose behind its construction, rather than security.
“All right, let’s do this,” Kozlowski said, dropping to one knee and locking his giant knuckles together to give Loring a place to put his foot. “I’ll boost you up to the top, and you help pull the lieutenant up. Then, if you both reach down, you’ll be able to pull me over.”
Loring nodded and put his foot into the cradle created by Loring’s hands. He gave a hop, and Kozlowski straightened his knees, giving him a boost like an Olympic weight lifter performing a clean and jerk. Loring was amazed at the man’s strength, as he almost catapulted fully over the fence to the other side. He managed to hold on to the top, though, and he straddled it to give himself some leverage. Then he reached down to grab Flaherty’s hand and lifted her up.
Now came the hard part, they all knew. Balanced at the top of the fence, Loring and Flaherty reached down and each took hold of one of Kozlowski’s hands. He was much heavier than either of them, and Loring thought for a moment that they weren’t going to be able to pull him over. It took some time, but they managed to get him to the top. Then they all dropped to the ground on the other side.
Once on the ground, the three looked around to get their bearings. The shipyard was quiet. Giant cargo containers twelve feet high and fifty feet long were lined up as far as the eye could see, stacked like some gargantuan child’s Legos.
Flaherty nodded toward the containers and whispered, “Do you believe they only check one in every twenty of those for weapons?”
Kozlowski looked back at the fence. “Yeah, but at least the security is airtight,” he mocked. “It’s a wonder we haven’t had more terrorist attacks.”
“Are we going to debate national security policy, or are we going to get inside that fort?” Loring snapped. As part of the federal government’s law enforcement structure, he felt a certain embarrassment at the lack of a coherent security plan. Flaherty and Kozlowski both nodded and kept silent as they set out.
The fence ran the entire length of the shared border between the shipyard and Castle Island, and the three of them hurried along it down toward the water. It ended on a pier that extended ten feet into the harbor. Kozlowski crawled out onto the pier to take a look around the fence.
“I can see the door to the tunnel,” he said when he got back. “Unfortunately, I can also see a boat tied to the jetty right near it, and it doesn’t look like the guy standing watch is a fisherman.”
“A guard?” Flaherty asked.
“More like a wiseguy, it looks to me.”
“What do we do?” Loring asked.
“We take him out,” Kozlowski replied without hesitation.
Tigh waited for several minutes before he started walking down the access road out toward Castle Island. He couldn’t take Loring’s car, he knew; it practically advertised his association with law enforcement. It might seem odd to Lefty that he was showing up on foot, but that was a risk he had to take.
As he neared the fort, he thought about how he should approach the situation. The first priority was simply to get inside and make sure Finn was still alive. Once he accomplished that, he figured he’d improvise the rest.
The road leading down to Castle Island was narrow, bordered on the left side by the fence that protected the shipyard, and on the right by a seawall that ran along Pleasure Bay. Toward the end of the peninsula, it opened up slightly to form a narrow parking lot for the tourists who frequented Fort Independence, particularly during the summer. The lot was empty at night, though. As he walked through the parking lot, Tigh looked up at the huge stone edifice that sat on top of the hill at the end of the road, thinking of the history of violence and horror associated with the Castle.
At the far end of the lot, where the blacktop gave way to a curb and then to a grassy hill that led up to the fort’s gates, there was a building that housed a concession stand, designed to serve the visitors. As Tigh passed the stand, a flashlight clicked on to his left, and the beam was directed into his face.
“Turn it off,” Tigh growled.
“Park’s closed, sir,” came Lefty Sullivan’s voice.
“I’m not sightseeing, Lefty. Now turn that damned thing off before I shove it up your arse.”
“Holy shit. Tigh,” Lefty said, recognizing him. He didn’t turn off the light, but he lowered it so it brightened Tigh’s chest rather than his face. He stepped out from the shadows of the concession stand.
Even in the dim light, his appearance was almost comical. As a child, Lefty had contracted a rare form of palsy that had stripped the right side of his body of its strength and retarded his growth. The paralysis eventually passed, and he’d regained the full use of his arms, but the impairment to his stature was permanent, as was his nickname. He stood no more than five foot three, and most of that was his upper body. As a young man, he’d become a compulsive weight lifter—to overcome the inferiority felt from childhood—and as a result, his chest, arms, and shoulders were oddly large for someone his size.
He wore an MDC guard shirt and khaki pants, cinched tight at his waist and covered with a huge utility belt that held a .45 automatic, nightstick, handcuffs, and Mace, all bulging from their various holsters. MDC guards were generally not permitted to carry firearms, but Lefty’s powerful father, Howie, had impressed on certain of his friends in the legislature the importance of his son’s ability to defend himself, so a special exemption had been passed as an addendum to a local highway bill.
“What are you doing here, Tigh?” Lefty asked, letting his hand rest on the butt of the huge gun hanging from his waist.
“I need to speak to McGuire,” Tigh said.
“What makes you think he’s here?”
“We both know he’s here, Lefty, so why don’t we skip the malarkey. I need to speak with him.” With that, Tigh started heading up the path toward the giant door to the Castle. Lefty stepped in front of him, raising the light up into his eyes again.
“I’m sorry, I can’t let you go up there, Tigh,” he said. He was directly in front of Tigh, only a foot or so away. Tigh reached out his giant paw of a hand and slapped at the light, knocking it out of Lefty’s grasp and sending it skittering out toward the parking lot.
“Now you see here, you little shite of a man, I don’t care who your father is. I need to talk to McGuire, and I’m going to talk to McGuire. I’ve been in this organization since you were only this high”—Tigh set his hand an inch or so below Lefty’s current height as an insult—“and if I say I need to do something, you’d better damned well listen and stay the hell out of my way. Got it?”
Lefty’s hand tightened around the butt of his gun. “I said you can’t go up there,” he said, but Tigh could hear his voice wavering.
“You’re wrong. I can, and I will,” Tigh said. He could tell he’d won the stalemate. Lefty would do nothing, and his hand relaxed around his pistol. Tigh began walking past him, when he heard another voice coming from the shadows under the concession stand.
“No, Tigh, you’re wrong.”
Tigh looked to his left and saw Johnny Mullins emerge from under the awning where the public restrooms were. Tigh realized instantly that Lefty was merely the first line of defense, and that McGuire had left Mullins to handle any problems too big for Lefty to deal with.
Johnny Mullins was twenty-five years old, and was making a reputation for himself in South Boston as a brutally efficient enforcer. At six foot six, he was taller than Tigh, but leaner— still with that young, hungry look that Tigh had lost some time ago. Much of his reputation stemmed from the rumor that he was responsible for the particularly gruesome killing of Manito Sanchez, the point man for a South American syndicate that was beginning to make inroads in the drug trade in Somerville and Revere. Mullins had been tasked with sending a message and resolving the conflict. To make sure there’d be no further misunderstanding, it was rumored Johnny had castrated Sanchez before killing him, and sent his trophy to one of Sanchez’s associates as a warning he’d be better off returning to South America. There’d been no further problem with that particular syndicate, and the story had made an instant legend of Johnny Mullins, who’d supposedly enjoyed every aspect of the task.
Tigh regarded Mullins, who was coming toward him and Lefty, lighting a cigarette as he walked. “Johnny,” he said, smiling. “It’s a little past your bedtime, isn’t it?”
Mullins laughed. He stuck out his hand. “It’s good to see you again, Tigh McCluen. It’s been a long time.” Tigh took the hand and the two locked each other in a mutual stare.
“It has been,” Tigh said, still smiling. “The last time I saw you, you were still roughing up the other kids for quarters at the arcades down at Revere Beach.” He raised his eyebrows. “I guess things change, don’t they?”
Mullins nodded. “And the last time I saw you, you were the most feared man in the entire city of Boston.” He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess things do change.”
“Maybe not so much as you think,” Tigh said, and he started walking toward the doors of Fort Independence again.
Mullins stepped in front of him. “I can’t let you go up there, Tigh. Tony was clear about my orders.”
Tigh looked at him. “Look here, you pea-brained fool, I have important information for McGuire—information that may prevent us all from getting busted. That means my neck is out there on the line right along with his. I’m going up there to talk to him, and I won’t be stopped by some upstart with a testosterone problem.” With that, he stepped around Mullins and continued up toward the fort.
Mullins thought about it for a moment and then put out his arm to stop Tigh. It was a mistake. If he’d pulled out a gun, Tigh might have reconsidered his options, but by extending his arm, he merely made himself vulnerable.
Tigh grabbed Mullins’s wrist and, in one clean, quick, brutal motion, he swung his other fist up from his waist, connecting perfectly with Mullins’s elbow. The force of the blow combined with the leverage of Tigh’s other hand gripping Mullins’s wrist, bending his elbow back, snapping the bones at the joint, and leaving the arm flapping helplessly. Then, just as quickly, Tigh grabbed the shocked man by the collar, holding his head steady, and drove his own forehead hard into Mullins’s face. Blood erupted from the man’s nose, and it looked as though the right side of his face had caved in. Tigh let go of his collar, and the younger man fell to the ground, unconscious.
He looked at Lefty, who’d gone pale and was backing away.
“You got a car, Lefty?” he asked.
“Yeah, Tigh, I do,” he stammered.
“Then go get it and bring it here. Pile this piece of crap in and take him to the hospital.”
“But I’ve got to stand guard out here.”
“There’s no one going to storm the place tonight, and the only alternative is to call an ambulance. Do you think McGuire would appreciate having to explain what we’re all doing here to an EMT?”
“Okay, I’ll take care of it,” Lefty said after thinking for a moment.
“Now, I’m going up to the Castle to talk to McGuire,” Tigh said. Then he paused, and added, “That is, if it’s all right with you?”
“Sure, Tigh, that’s fine with me. Whatever you say.” Lefty nodded enthusiastically as he scurried off to get his car.
Tigh watched him go. Then he looked down at the crumpled wreckage of Johnny Mullins. He knelt for a moment and whispered into the ear of the unconscious man, “A word of advice, my boy: you should never take as much pleasure in this line of work as you appear to. It’s unseemly.”
Then he stood up, turned, and headed up the path to the huge iron doors that led into the Castle.
K
OZLOWSKI CREPT ALONG
the rocks down near the shoreline, inching closer to the jetty, always careful to stay low and out of sight. When he reached the wood planking suspended from the pilings, he caught his breath and looked back toward the shipyard to see if he could make out Loring and Flaherty, but the night was dark and every feature of the shoreline seemed obscured. That gave him some comfort.
It hadn’t been easy to convince Loring and Flaherty to stay behind, but logic ultimately prevailed. “The more people we have out there on those rocks, the more likely it is we’ll be seen,” Kozlowski reasoned. “Once I’m there, taking the guy out will be easy. Any way you look at it, it’s a one-man job.” In the end, his reasoning had been persuasive, and the other two agreed to hang back. Kozlowski knew, though, that somewhere behind him in the darkness, Flaherty had her gun trained on the cigarette burning at the end of the pier, hovering near the boat tied to the jetty.
Kozlowski poked his head up above the pier to evaluate the situation. The jetty was fifty feet long, but the darkness made it seem endless. He could see the silhouette of what appeared to be a heavyset man reclining in the captain’s chair of the thirty-foot Sea Ray, his feet up on the console as he leaned back and looked out at the planes taking off and landing at Logan Airport across the harbor.
It was clear Kozlowski wasn’t going to be able to take him by surprise. The pier was too long, and Kozlowski knew he’d be spotted long before he got to the boat at the end of it. He decided that a strong bluff was the only chance he had.
He looked up and waited until an inbound plane was directly overhead on its approach to the airport, and hauled himself onto the pier as it passed so that the roar of its engines would cover any sound he made. Then he positioned himself on the pier so that it would look like he was coming from the Castle.
He was halfway out on the pier when the man on the boat saw him. “Who’s that?” he demanded.
Kozlowski kept strolling nonchalantly toward the boat, his hand clutching his revolver down next to his leg, out of sight. He knew in the darkness, from a distance, it would be difficult for the man to tell who he was. “McGuire told me he needs you inside,” he said. It was a risk, but a calculated one. It was always possible McGuire wasn’t actually in Fort Independence himself, in which case the shooting would likely start soon. He was hoping he’d guessed right, though.
“What for?” the man asked, drawing a sigh of relief from Kozlowski.
“How should I know?” he responded, drawing ever closer to the man at the end of the pier. “He told me to watch the boat.”
The man grunted as he lifted his gut up and climbed out of the captain’s chair. “Okay. You know what to do if the cops show up?”
“Yeah, I know,” Kozlowski said. He was at the boat now, and he reached his left hand out to help the man off.
“I don’t know you, do I?” the man said as he stepped onto the jetty and accepted Kozlowski’s hand. “Are you with Johnny’s crew out of Somerville?”
As Kozlowski helped the man up with his left hand, he brought his gun up under his chin with his right, pinning him back against a piling. “No, I’m with the police commissioner’s crew out of Area A-1,” he said. “And you’re under arrest. I’d read you your rights, but we’re a little pressed for time, so I’m just going to assume that you are familiar enough with our criminal justice system to know your rights already.”
“Fuck you!” the man said, swinging his arm across his face, knocking Kozlowski’s hand and causing the gun to discharge as his arm jerked away. At the same time Kozlowski heard the gun go off, he felt a warm, wet blast on his face, which he quickly recognized as blood.
He was stunned. Had the man really killed himself with such a stupid move? The huge body in front of him lurched back against the piling, and Kozlowski let go to wipe the blood off his face. As he opened his eyes, he caught a brief glimpse of the huge man’s arm swinging toward Kozlowski’s head in a rage, and he ducked to avoid the brunt of the blow.
Looking up again, Kozlowski realized that the man wasn’t dead, but he was very angry. The force of his arm had been sufficient to knock Kozlowski’s gun out from under the center of his chin before it fired. As a result, rather than blowing a hole through the roof of his mouth and out the top of his skull, the bullet had merely destroyed the side of his face, ripping his cheek and ear away from the bone, leaving them flapping in the night breeze, secured to the bone only by a thin sliver of sinew.
The man was swinging his fist blindly again, and Kozlowski ducked once more. As the fist passed over his bent head, the detective reached out and thrust his head forward, driving it into the man’s solar plexus. As the wounded man doubled up from the blow, Kozlowski snapped his head back up quickly, and the back of his head slammed into the man’s chin, knocking him unconscious.
Kozlowski felt the man’s weight topple forward, and he managed to redirect the mass with his arms over the side of the pier and back down onto the floor of the Sea Ray, where it landed with a crack that seemed louder than the gunshot.
The detective rubbed his sore head as he stepped down into the boat to see if the man was still breathing. He was.
Thank goodness for small miracles.
The paperwork required to clear an officer-involved homicide was endless. He took out his handcuffs and was busy cuffing the man’s hands to the boat’s railing when Flaherty and Loring finally arrived.
“What the hell happened?” Flaherty demanded. “I thought you said taking this guy out was going to be a piece of cake.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant. I’m fine,” Kozlowski said, looking up at Flaherty with a grin.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed as she looked down at her partner and noticed his face was covered in blood. “Koz, are you sure you’re okay?”
He nodded. “It’s his blood.”
“So what happened?” she pressed. “What happened was that this asshole is a giant moron with a death wish—one which I was unfortunately not able to grant.” He looked down at the still-breathing carcass. “Better luck next time,” he said.
“Both of us should have taken him out,” Flaherty said.
“Oh please,” Kozlowski said, sneering. “It would have made no difference.”
“You don’t know that,” she retorted.
“Detectives!” Loring interrupted. “I’d suggest you finish this later. Right now we need to get inside.”
“He’s right,” Kozlowski said. “For all we know, they may have heard the gunshot from inside.”
“I doubt they could hear it through those walls; that’s over ten feet of stone. But we should still get moving,” Loring said.
All three hurried back up the pier and scrambled onto the rocks toward the thin beach at the edge of Fort Independence. After following the seawall that ringed the shore for twenty yards or so, they came to a rusted iron door.
“This must be it,” Flaherty said doubtfully. The door looked impenetrable.
Kozlowski ran his fingers around the edges. “I don’t think it’s locked,” he said, wiggling his thick fingers under the steel catch. He pulled, and the door budged an inch or two out, and then slammed back shut, nearly taking his fingers off. “Damn, it’s heavy,” he said. “I think we’re all going to have to do this.” He looked at Loring. “You go high, the lieutenant can take the bottom, and I’ll pull on the side.”
They nodded, and all three attacked the door, working their fingers under the sides. “Ready?” Flaherty asked once she had a strong hold on the bottom edge.
“Ready,” Loring confirmed.
“Okay, on the count of three,” Kozlowski said. “One, two, three.”
They pulled for all they were worth, throwing their backs into the task and straining the delicate muscles in their fingers, which screamed out in pain. Finally the opening was wide enough for Kozlowski to slide his whole hand into it, and he repositioned himself to get better leverage, pulling on the door with both arms.
The massive iron gate swung wide open and crashed against the seawall, revealing a tunnel much narrower than the size of the door suggested.
Flaherty peered into the blackness.
“McCluen said the tunnel is fifty yards long, and there is a trapdoor at the end of it,” Loring said.
“I hope his information is good,” said Flaherty. She looked apprehensive.
“It always has been before,” Loring assured.
“Well then, I suppose there’s no reason to stand around here,” Kozlowski said. And with that, he stepped onto the threshold, crouched down to fit his bulk into the opening, and disappeared into the black tunnel.