Where It Hurts (27 page)

(LATER MONDAY NIGHT)

I
was lucky Harrigan’s was empty when I stuck the muzzle of my Glock under the barman’s Adam’s apple and told him I had to see his boss for Zee’s own good. I had tried asking politely to no good effect and my threshold for bullshit was at a record low.

“The last people you wanna call are the cops,” I said to the bartender when he told me Zee was in his office waiting. “Believe me when I say if I hear a siren coming this way, I’m gonna come back out here and beat the piss outta you.”

He shrugged, but I couldn’t tell if it was that he was unafraid or if he just didn’t care. The net result was the same.

Zee was where he was the first time I’d come into his office, seated behind his desk, the haze of a recently smoked bowl hanging in the air like a disoriented ghost. It was the second time in less than a half hour I’d smelled the earthy burn of high-quality marijuana. There was something different about Zee this trip, and I didn’t mean the unwelcoming expression on his weathered face. Only his gnarled left fist was atop his desk. My guess was his right hand was in his lap, aiming a sidearm at me.
Probably a .45,
I thought. Something with a lot of stopping power,
but nothing as ridiculous or unwieldy as a Desert Eagle. No, that wasn’t his style. Besides, there was no way in his condition that he’d be able to handle a weapon as heavy as an Eagle. I didn’t blame him for being leery. He’d kicked me out of the place during my last visit and I’d just forced my way in here by sticking a gun in his employee’s neck.

“I come in peace,” I said, raising my hands above my head as I entered. “All I wanna do is talk.”

“First put your piece on the desk, then we’ll see about talking.”

I did as he asked, laying the little Glock on the desk in front of him.

“I thought I kicked your ass outta here for good.”

“You did.”

“So why the fuck are you back?”

“If you’d bothered taking one of my calls, I wouldn’t be. You mind if I sit?” I asked, throwing my thumb at the chair facing his desk. “It’s been a long, strange night.”

He nodded. I sat.

“You don’t need to be holding that piece on me, you know?”

He smiled a malevolent half-smile. “That’s kinda not up to you, Gus.”

“What is it, a .45?”

“Something like that. Whatever the fuck it is, just know it’s big enough to blow a nice hole in you if you do something stupid.”

“Look, Zee, I came here to warn you to watch your back.”

He sneered at me. “I’ve been watching my back since I come out of my momma’s pussy.”

“Should’ve been a poet.”

“Lotsa shoulda beens and shoulda dones in my life, Gus. Poet was never one of them. Used to play me some guitar when I was young, though.” He held up his misshapen hand. “Good thing I didn’t chase that career, huh? Tough to play with my hands all fucked up the way they are. Maybe when I get out to the desert I’ll have a go at it again. Have someone break my bones and cut my tendons, then have them reset and sewn back together in the shape of an F chord. That chord’s a real pain in the ass.”

“You gotta live long enough to make it out there, Zee.”

“All right, say what you’ve come to say. I’m in a charitable mood ’cause I’m outta here by the end of the week.”

“I know why TJ and Tommy were killed.”

Zee’s eyes got big in spite of himself, and there wasn’t a hint of skepticism in them. He knew I wouldn’t have come here if I was just talking out my ass.

“I’m listening.”

When I was done explaining to him about TJ and the stolen drugs, the retired dentist with the mostly missing head, and the dead men I’d come across earlier, he told me to come collect my gun off his desk. And I heard the thud as he dumped his weapon into one of the drawers. Afterward, I saw his right hand for the first time since I’d walked in. As he lifted it up, he flexed his fingers and grimaced. It hurt to witness it. I could almost hear his bones crackle and creak.

“That’s fucked up. So you think the kid stole a load of heroin and now it’s payback time?” he asked, sitting back in his chair and lighting up another bowl. “But why now, four or five months after it happened?”

“Good question. I haven’t worked that out yet. I think that maybe the party TJ took it from had given up on the shipment as a lost cause and written it off. Then, for some reason, that party got renewed hope of recovering it.” I shrugged. “But what do I really know? Christ, Zee, I’m not even sure who’s killing who or why exactly, but all I know is somebody’s busy tying up loose ends and that anyone connected to the Delcaminos seems to qualify. That means you qualify.”

“How about that asshole friend of TJ’s?”

“Ralphy O’Connell?”

“Him, yeah.”

I scratched at my cheek, thinking about it. “Good catch. I’ll give him a call when we’re done here.”

“You think TJ mighta told the O’Connell kid where he stashed the drugs?”

“Good question, Zee. O’Connell says no, but who knows? TJ and him were tight.”

“Maybe you better go see the kid instead of calling, you know,” Zee said. “What I remember of him when he came around here with TJ, he wasn’t too bright.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Seemed like a real loyal guy, but no Einstein. If he’s at work, I could see him on my way home,” I said, as much to myself as to Zee. “This thing, whatever it is, is coming to a head and fast, but you’ll be outta here in a few days anyway.”

“A few days. That all you think it’ll be?”

“Violence has a certain kind of internal momentum. It’s like an unwinding watch spring. Once you release some of the tension, you release it all.”

Zee raised his eyebrows, like maybe he was considering what I’d said. “Is that what you think’s going on here?”

“The killing’s already begun and I don’t think it’s gonna stop. I better go have that word with Ralphy now,” I said, getting up out of my seat.

“Sorry about the harsh words last time. It was a good thing of you to come here and gimme a heads-up.” He stretched out his right arm and unfurled his knotted right hand. “I appreciate the help.”

I shook it. “If I don’t see you again, good luck out west. Hope it helps with the pain.”

“Just getting the hell outta here will help with that. Adios, Long fuckin’ Island.”

And that was that.

I apologized to the barman on the way out, but his reaction was pretty much the same as it had been before. His expression was inscrutable. He looked like a man who had given up. The way I used to look every single day until Tommy Delcamino walked into the lobby of the Paragon.

(TUESDAY, EARLY MORNING)

B
y most social standards, Ralph O’Connell was a man, but the reality was that he was Ralphy, just a big dumb kid who loved his damned car and missed his best friend. It was hard not to feel sorry for him. Feeling sorry for him wasn’t going to save his ass.

“I don’t know nothin’. I didn’t do nothin’,” he kept repeating when I stopped by the Northport Manor.

“Well, kid, if you are holding anything back about the drug deal that went bad or that night last August when TJ came to see you with the money, now would be the time to tell me.”

“I swear on my mother,” he pleaded, as if swearing on your mother mattered. As if swearing mattered at all. As if it ever had.

I couldn’t count how many times guilty shitbirds with bloody hands protested their innocence to me by swearing on the souls of their children, their mothers, or their dead grandmothers. Those lies were then usually accompanied by invoking God and Christ as false witnesses. But for some reason, I believed the poor schmo.

“TJ didn’t tell you about any stolen drugs or where he got the money he gave you?”

“Nope. I’m tellin’ you, I don’t know nothin’.”

“How about the black eye and the swollen cheek, did he tell you where he got those?”

Ralph shook his big empty head. He was plenty scared. He had a lot to be scared about. I didn’t like doing it to him, but he needed to know he was in danger.

“Okay, Ralphy, get gone right now,” I said. “Get in your car and go visit some relative out of state or something. Don’t go back home to pick up clothes or anything. Just go.”

“But my folks will get all worried.”

“Call them from wherever, but don’t tell them where you are. If you check into a motel, don’t use your real name and pay in cash. Understand?”

I handed him three hundred dollars of Tommy D.’s bankroll.

“Yeah, I understand. I’m not that stupid. But I’ve got a few more hours of work.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll go talk to the boss and it will be okay. I promise you. Freddy and I go back a long way. You’ll have a job when you come home.”

The only part of what I’d told him that was true was the part about Freddy Guccione and me going way back. For all I knew, Freddy might have a cow when I told him that the kid had split and wouldn’t return for at least a few days. I just had to get Ralph out of town.

“How long will I have to stay away?”

“I don’t figure too long. Maybe you’ll be back by Christmas.”

That put a smile on his face. Good, I thought, maybe he’d come around to think of this as an adventure and not focus on the danger he was in. And maybe for a few seconds, it even worked. Then the smile vanished. The fear and second thoughts were making him freeze up on me.

“Go!” I shouted at him, grabbing him and shoving him toward the door. “Go. I’ll tell you all about how it turns out when you get back.”

Once I’d left Northport Manor and made it safely back to the Paragon, I took the added precaution of switching rooms again. I left
everything except the clothes on my back, my framed photo of John Jr., and my gun where they were. I didn’t have it in me to move all my things at that hour. Besides, I only needed a place to sack out until the sun came up. I didn’t figure anyone was ballsy or stupid enough to try something in the hotel once day broke. I was wrong.

I don’t know what it was I thought I’d heard, but whatever my sleeping brain perceived it as, I knew it wasn’t good. I swiped my gun off the nightstand even before I opened my eyes. Then I heard it again, again, and again. This time I didn’t have any questions about the sound or my muddled perceptions. Gunshots, even muffled, distant ones, have a distinct quality about them that distinguishes them from fireworks or engine backfires.

Still in my clothes, I tripped out of my room barefoot, ran down the hall, and stumbled down the cold stairs to the second floor, trying to shake the sleep out of my head as I went. I turned left out of the stairwell door, running toward my old room. The glut of snowed-in guests we’d had over the weekend had thinned out so that we were now nearly empty, though a few nervous heads popped out of their doors to see what was going on.

“Get back in your rooms,” I shouted at them as I ran.

And even before I turned the last corner, I could smell the acrid tinge of gunsmoke in the air. I pressed my back flat to the wall and listened. Nothing. No gunfire. No footsteps. Nobody’s breathing but my own. I peeked past the corner of the wall around the bend. Again, nothing, though the last remnants of smoke hung in the air. Then, just as I was stepping out, turning to go to my old room, I heard footsteps coming up behind me. I spun, my gun out in front of me.

“Is Slava, Gus,” he said, coming at me. “Don’t shooting. Don’t shooting.”

He held that Russian pistol in his hand as he came.

“The guests are all calling desk to see what is the noise. I’m hearing it from downstairs.”

“I heard it, too. Cover me.”

He understood and struck a pose with his Makarov aimed right at the door to my old room. As I moved flat along the wall, my gun before me, Slava moved, too. We both inched toward what was left of the door to my old room. Someone had blasted the lock and hinges with shotgun slugs, then kicked the door down. Enough ambient light from the hall leaked into the room so that we could both see the room was empty.

“Clear,” I said, as much out of habit as anything else.

When Slava and I finished double-checking, we turned to look at the ruined bed. The comforter was peppered with little buckshot holes around one large central blast that would have cut a tunnel through my midsection and soaked the mattress with my blood and intestines.

“Mixed load,” I said to Slava. “Buckshot and slugs.”

He nodded at me. He knew it before I said it. Even in the midst of this I could not help but wonder about who Slava really was and how he came to be standing in this hotel room with me.

Slava said, “I was late to come because one of guests using his key card to get in north side door from parking lot entrance was attacked by man with black hoodie. But guest was not robbed.”

“No, the guy just wanted to get in without coming through the front entrance. And we know why he wanted to get in.”

“This man in hoodie, he is serious to kill you, Gus.”

I nodded. “Listen, Slava, I have to get outta here.”

He understood and pulled his car keys from his pocket. I told him I’d gotten rid of the tracking device, but that my car might not be safe.

“Don’t worry. I will take cab. You go,” he said, pointing at my bare feet with the muzzle of his gun.

I thought about running back upstairs to get my leather jacket, socks, and shoes, but the sound of sirens made me rethink that. Instead, I grabbed my gym bag and filled it up with whatever I could yank out of my drawers. Found an old pair of Nikes and stuck them on my feet. Then I did what the Nikes had been designed for: I ran.

(TUESDAY MORNING)

I
’d slept in car seats more comfortable than Bill Kilkenny’s couch, but I wasn’t about to complain about a man who had opened his door to me at four in the morning without so much as a second look. It was as if he had expected me to show up there sooner or later. Only he knew if it was the former or the latter. All he’d said to me was “You can sleep on the couch and we’ll talk later in the morning, the two of us.”

Later was now, but Bill was nowhere to be seen when my phone buzzed in the pocket of my jeans. The jeans I’d slept in. And I’d slept lightly, even nervously, and was easily stirred. The sun was up and the basement apartment was alive with the angry hum and rumble of the oil burner. Still, I could see how Bill might find comfort in this basement-dwelling life he’d carved out for himself. It was alive with things: noises and smells that wouldn’t permit a man to be numb. I didn’t have time to search for Bill, answering my phone instead.

“I got something for you,
jefe
,” said Alvaro Peña, his voice full of pride.

I was glad that someone had something for me other than a death wish.

“What you got, Alvaro?”

“I couldn’t find nothing on Ilana Little, but I remembered you saying that you weren’t so sure on the last name. So I called around to some of the guys who worked Wyandanch back in the day. I think I found the woman you were looking for. She went by the name Ilana Smalls, not Little.”

I could hear that Alvaro was still talking in my ear, but I couldn’t make out the words he was saying. Somehow the droning of the furnace was more distinct. A flurry of images, of red hair and green eyes, of an old cop and a pretty young girl, flashed through my head. And suddenly things had fallen into place. Not completely, not yet. There were still a few ingredients missing from the stew, but not many. I was almost there. I just had to keep myself alive long enough to get those last few missing pieces to put it all together.

“Are you even fucking listening to me,
pendejo
?”

“Sorry, man. I had a rough night. What were you saying?”

“Starting from where?”

“From the beginning.”

“So this Ilana Smalls was really something, Gus. All the guys said she was smoking hot, but that she could be one mercenary bitch. Word is she was connected all around, Mob ties and gang ties and . . .” His voice drifted off.

“And cop ties, too, huh?”

I could almost hear his shoulders sag on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, maybe. That’s what the old-timers said. Rumors, you know, that she did favors and got favors in return. But there was nothing anyone could prove. And who wants to prove that kind of shit, anyways?”

“You got a current address for her?”

“Depends, bro.”

“On what?”

“On whether you believe in hell, because that’s as close to a street address as I can give you.”

“Deceased?”

“With a capital D, my man. About eighteen months ago. Somebody
in Kings Park used her head for batting practice and dumped her body over on the grounds of the old psychiatric center. Story was all over the media. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it.”

I let that pass. I didn’t want to go into why the world had been a vacuum and void for the last two years. For all I knew or cared during that time, the Asian continent might have been swallowed up whole or Atlantis could have been discovered. What would any of it have mattered to me?

“Catch the guy who killed her?”

“Nope.”

“Thanks, Alvaro. I owe you.”

“You bet your ass you do,” he said with a laugh in his voice. “Nah, Gus, we’re good, man. But I got a bad feeling about all this. Watch your back.”

“I will.” I was about to say my goodbyes when another question occurred to me. “One more thing, then I’ll let you be. You have any idea who caught the Smalls case and who worked it when it was turned over to Homicide?”

I heard his fingers tapping at the keyboard.

“Pete McCann caught it first and it wound up with . . . Paxson and Carey.”

“Thanks, Alvaro.”

He clicked off.

I swung my feet over the edge of the couch and tried stretching the bad sleep out of my bones. It helped some. I threw on my old Nikes and walked around to the side of the house where Bill did his smoking and thinking. There was no sign of him other than some ugly shoeprints in the hardened snow that remained from Saturday’s storm, so I went back into the house. When I got out of the shower, I shaved with Bill’s old-fashioned blade razor, and used a little of his mouthwash. Even that was old school. The kind of stuff that tasted more like Lysol than cool mint.

I threw on some fresh clothes and put in a call to Al Roussis. He thanked me for putting him onto Jamal and Antwone. As I’d
suggested, he picked them up for questioning. Said that I was right, that there’d been plenty of forensic and ballistic evidence tying them to the Delcamino crime scene, but not to the homicide itself. He was sweating them on the homicide anyway. For leverage, he said. Al was smart that way. If K-Shivs’ boys thought they were facing first- or second-degree murder charges, they might cough up all sorts of information to save their own necks. Might even roll over on their boss and put a major-league feather in Al’s cap. So far, he said, they weren’t talking. My guess was they wouldn’t give up their boss, murder charges or no murder charges. With K-Shivs’ gang connections, neither Jamal nor Antwone would live to see a month in prison if they rolled over on Shivers. Gangs didn’t abide by New York State’s ban on executions, and their appeals process was fairly nonexistent.

Bill came through the door as I was hanging up with Al Roussis. He had a brown bag in his hands that might just as well have been a magic hat. For out of that bag he produced two large coffees and two heart-attack specials: scrambled eggs, bacon, and cheese on buttered rolls. The aroma of the coffee and bacon were almost enough to make me forget that somebody, maybe more than one somebody, was anxious to kill me.

“From the look of you in the wee hours, I sensed you might be in need of this,” Bill said, spreading the food out on his table. “You can explain as we eat.”

I sat down at the table, fixed up my coffee the way I liked it, and demolished the egg sandwich in a few big bites. Bill ate more like a human being, patiently waiting for me to begin the conversation. And when I did, I don’t think what I said surprised him.

“When you and Jimmy Regan came to see me the other night and he swore his innocence to me, I saw the look on your face, Bill. You didn’t believe him, did you?”

He shook his head. “I did not. Not a word of it, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t know if he killed either TJ or Tommy Delcamino, but he’s involved in some bad things.”

“I feared as much.”

“You do realize he tried to buy me off with that bullshit about his door always being open to me.”

“That was uncharacteristically ham-handed of Jimmy.”

“Desperate people do clumsy things. I think he senses the walls are caving in around him and he’s flailing about trying to keep me off his case at any cost.”

“I have to say I think you’re exaggerating a bit there, Gus. It’s quite a stretch to describe a vague offer of a job as a desperate attempt to keep you quiet at any cost.”

“How about two attempts on my life in one day? Would that qualify?”

Bill swallowed hard and went pale. “Jimmy tried to have you killed?”

“I’m not sure it was him, at least not directly,” I said.

I told him about the retired dentist who’d taken the bullet meant for me and the shotgun blasts in my mattress at the Paragon. I told him about the dead detective I’d found at Smudge’s house and about how I’d seen Lazy Eye gunned down right in front of me.

He crossed himself. Shook his head in disbelief.

“Gus, while I don’t doubt a word of it and I’m sure Jimmy was lying about some things the other night, what has he to do with a dead drug dealer?”

“Remember when Regan denied knowing a Kareem Shivers?”

“I do.”

“The guy I saw gunned down last night worked for Shivers, and if what I’m thinking is correct, Jimmy Regan has a pretty direct connection to Kareem Shivers.”

Bill made a face. “And that would be?”

“Not until I’m sure, Bill. Not until I’m sure.”

“Don’t you trust me, Gus?”

“With my life.” I raised my palms to him. “I think I trust you more than anyone else alive, but I also think you still trust Jimmy Regan in spite of what I’ve said and what you’ve seen for yourself.”

He tilted his head and nodded. “I suppose I do. My trust is a persistent thing, not so easily shaken. Sometimes you have to want to believe in people, and I want to believe in Jimmy as I would always want to believe in you, Gus Murphy.”

“I’m lucky to have you in my corner and so is Jimmy Regan.”

I walked over to the couch and threw on my blue work jacket, the words “Paragon Hotel” emblazoned on the back. I collected my things and tossed them into the gym bag.

He seemed surprised. “Gus, you know you’re welcome to stay with me as long as need be. There’s no reason for you to leave.”

“There will be people looking for me, Bill, and it’s better for you and safer for us both if you don’t know where I’m headed or what I’m doing.”

He didn’t say anything to that. Instead, he put out his bony and brown-spotted right hand to me. When I went to shake it, he slipped a small gold crucifix onto my palm and folded my fingers around it.

Anticipating my reaction, he said, “I know you don’t believe, but take it and keep it close . . . as a favor to me. And whether you like it or not, I’ll pray for you.”

He smiled a devilish smile because he knew he had me. I slid the crucifix into my jacket pocket.

“While you’re at it, Bill, pray for him to turn my skin into Kevlar.”

Bill laughed, shaking his head. “You are a cynical bastard, Gus Murphy.”

“I didn’t used to be. Not even twenty years on the street could do that to me. I suppose I have God to thank for that. Him and his secret plans for my son.”

“You still have the rage in you, Gus.”

“Always.”

“Do you realize, I wonder, that all that rage and fury is aimed in the wrong direction?”

I felt that heat rising beneath my skin, bubbling up to the surface. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I slammed my gym bag to the ground.

“That you’re not angry at God.”

“Bullshit!”

“It’s the truth, and what’s more, you know it, Gus.”

“For chrissakes, Bill, if not God, then who?”

“Your son.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but only barely human noises came out.

“Abandonment is a very special kind of hell, and no abandonment hurts so like the death of a child.”

He turned his back to me and retreated to the bathroom. This wasn’t up for discussion, at least not between Bill and me, not now. I patted the jacket pocket where I’d put the crucifix and left.