by Blake Banner
I turned to Dehan and nodded. Conor Hagan was a subtle and intelligent man, who should never be underestimated. I looked over at the two officers and signaled again to await my signal.
Then another voice spoke. It was deep and resonant, and familiar.
“Let’s get this over with, Alvaro. I am not comfortable here. I don’t even know why you called me.”
I couldn’t see the speaker. He seemed to be sitting on a crate behind Tony. Vincenzo turned toward him. “I told you. Hagan wants to talk to you. He’s given us a gesture of goodwill; the least we can do is listen to him. He’s a fuckin’ Mick but we are all Catholics. I’d rather cooperate with him than get into a fuckin’ war with him.”
“I’m giving him another five minutes. If he doesn’t show, I am out of here.”
“He’ll show, if he wants his fuckin’ money.”
I knew in that moment that he did not plan to show and he had written off the money. He was going to recover it another way. I gave the uniforms the thumbs up and stepped out from behind the pillar. At the same time, Dehan stepped out from the other side, and I shouted, “Freeze! NYPD! You are surrounded! Drop your weapons!”
Tony reached for his piece. I shot him in the heart and he kind of folded up and lay down. Immediately, there was an answering shot from behind Vincenzo, and one of the two uniformed cops fell. I shouted again, “Freeze!”
Dehan was shouting into her radio to the two cops I’d left at the cars, “Officer down! Officer down! Move in!”
Then, everything happened at once. Vincenzo stuck his hands up in the air, while Joe pulled his piece to fire. The other uniform screamed, “Drop it!” and the unseen shooter fired twice and dropped him. Dehan and I both fired and Joe went down. Feet were running behind us. Another shot and the light went out. Dehan was shouting, “A flashlight! A flashlight! Get back to the car! Get a flashlight!” More feet running, and for a moment there was a silhouette against the pale oblong of the open door. One of the uniforms, a crack, a spit of fire, and the silhouette cried out and fell.
Then there was stillness and absolute silence. Dehan’s voice again. “Officers down! Repeat, officers down! Request immediate back up to Coster Street!”
I whispered to Dehan, “Cover me!” and sprinted headlong for the door, keeping low. I threw myself on the floor and rolled to the left of the opening. Two cracks and two whining ricochets off the steel blind. I crawled toward the opening, took a hold of the door and heaved it back, widening the gap by about four feet. Then, I frantically scrambled and rolled over the threshold under a hail of bullets, next I was up and running for the nearest car. A movement behind me and a voice shouted, “Detective! This one!”
It was the other uniform, making for his car. As he jumped in, I said, “I’ll cover you!” In the distance, I could hear the screeching of rubber on blacktop as the other cars approached. He fired up the engine, hit the gas, and, with his lights on long and a wild screaming of tires, he slammed the patrol car through the entrance. The hangar was immediately flooded with light. I followed him in and dodged to the side, into the shadows, swinging my piece left and right, searching the warehouse for the shooter.
Next thing, I was hit by an express train and slammed onto the floor. The wind was knocked out of me and instinctively I covered my head and face with my arms. They took the full brunt of a fist like a ball of rock that slammed into me twice. Then a big foot stamped on my ribs and my assailant was gone.
I staggered to my feet, feeling like somebody had rammed a crowbar through my lungs. As I went back through the door, the two cars that had been covering the back, in Manida Street, came blazing in from north and south. I winced in the glare of their headlamps, searching for my assailant. I couldn’t see him. I stepped into the road, waving the cars to stop, shouting at them, “Search the road! One man! Six two! Black! In a suit!”
Then they were out of their cars, the beams from their flashlights bobbing in the darkness, probing behind the cars, under the cars, moving away from me. My mind was spinning.
I ran back to my car and called dispatch. “We have three officers down and two suspects, all injured or dead. We need ambulances. We have one escaped suspect. Request back up patrols to search the Coster Street area, black male, six two or six three, powerfully built, armed and dangerous, wearing an expensive suit.” I gave them the parameters of the search, but even as I was doing it, I knew it was hopeless.
The uniforms came back at a jog. “No sign of him, detective. What do you want us to do?”
“You two take the car, start searching west, he may have made for the park. I’ll see if I can get a chopper.” They scrambled for their car. I turned to the other two. “You two, get inside, assist Detective Dehan with the arrest.”
They headed inside at a run and I called the captain.
“Stone, what the hell is going on?”
“Not now. You’ll have my report. I need a full manhunt. I need a chopper over Baretto Park and I need every available car crawling over every inch of Hunts Point.”
“Have you…”
“Now, Captain! Every second counts! I’m bringing Vincenzo in. We’ll talk then.”
“You wha…”
But I’d hung up, and as the sirens began to wail across the night, I went back inside. The officer who had been shot while trying to get the flashlight was on the floor, receiving first aid from his partner. The other two who had gone down in the firefight were dead. Dehan had Vincenzo in cuffs, sitting on the floor, and the two cops from the patrol car were untying Bellini. He looked rough.
The sirens swelled in volume and the pulse of red and blue lights filled the hangar to the screech of brakes. Next thing, paramedics were streaming in like ants and somebody was barking, “Get this damn car out of the doorway!”
I stepped over to Dehan. She was looking down at the bishop, talking to him, reading him his rights. Then the cops had him on his feet, and they were pulling his arms behind his back. His face was ugly and swollen. One eye was completely closed and the other swiveled, looking at me with pure, undiluted hatred. And in that moment, he keeled over and fell.
He sprawled in a heap next to Tony’s lifeless body. One of the cops shouted, “Paramedic! We need a paramedic here!”
Then everything happened in slow motion. I could see his eye, still focused on me. I could see Dehan, looking down at him, taking half a step back. One cop was shouting, looking for the ambulance teams, the other was bending to assist Bellini. And Bellini’s right hand was reaching, reaching out for Tony’s automatic. He swung it around in a slow arc till it was leveled straight at my chest. I was aware my legs ached, my head was foggy, and I had shooting pains like blades in my chest. I knew I had to move, but I knew I was going to be too slow.
There was a noise like two doors slamming in rapid succession. Bellini was still staring at me. His gun was trained on me. He seemed to convulse and gurgle, and blood spewed from his mouth. There was a big, ugly hole in his chest. He lay back and died. I turned and looked at Dehan. She was staring at Bellini and she was holding her automatic in both hands.
She turned to me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure. How many rounds did you pull off?”
“Two.”
I nodded. “Then I’m okay.”
“Detective?”
I turned. There was a paramedic looking up at me, frowning. She was pretty and I smiled at her. “Hi.”
“You’re bleeding. Quite a lot.”
TWENTY-SIX
“We have to get you to the hospital, Detective.”
“No, what you have to do is give me something for the pain, plug the hole and let me do my job.”
I was sitting in the back of an ambulance with my shirt off, a drip in my arm and the pretty paramedic examining a hole in my shoulder. Overhead, I could hear the thud of the chopper searching Baretto Point. I was watching Vincenzo being loaded in the back of a patrol car and the dead cops being wheeled out on gurneys and loaded into the back of
a meat wagon. Dehan was staring at me.
“Don’t be an ass, Stone.”
“I yam what I yam and dat’s what I yam.”
She sighed. I made a ‘whatcha gonna do?’ face.
The pretty paramedic said, “You were lucky, detective, it’s a through and through. Couple of inches down and it would have punctured your lung. Even so, you need to get to a hospital.”
I smiled at her. “It means a lot to me that you care. Put a plaster on it and I promise to go to the hospital tomorrow, first thing, after breakfast.”
She sighed and started patching me up. Dehan was shaking her head. I noticed the way the red and blue lights washed the planes of her face and her cheekbones and realized I was still a little high on shock. A car pulled up and the captain climbed out. He had a look of outrage on his face.
“What in the name of…?”
Dehan cut across him with a voice like frozen hydrogen fashioned into a blade.
“Detective Stone was injured in the line of duty, sir! He was shot while attempting to save myself and other officers!”
He frowned at her a moment, then looked at me. “Is it serious?”
“Just a graze.”
The pretty paramedic had to speak up. “It is not just a graze! It is a gunshot wound and needs proper medical attention at the hospital.”
“Stone, you are to go to the hospital and have that wound seen to, then I want a report on my desk.”
I smiled at the paramedic. I said sweetly, “Don’t talk.” Then I smiled at the captain. “Captain, I will do that, but we are not done and I cannot afford the time to do that right now. There are things you need to know.” I was aware I was not speaking normally.
Dehan opened her mouth and I gave her a look that Julius Caesar might have given Brutus seconds before he stabbed him. She closed her mouth, the Captain didn’t.
“Detective, I am giving you…”
I interrupted him. “Please don’t make me disobey a direct order, Captain. It would look so bad on TV and in the papers. Especially when they report the bent FBI agent angle.”
His open mouth sagged, then closed. “I hope you know what you are doing, John.”
“That is a wish we share, John. Now, with your permission, I need to go and talk to Mr. Alvaro Vincenzo.”
I turned to the paramedic. “Did anybody ever tell you you are real pretty?”
She gave me ‘that look’ and said, “Yeah, my mom. Did anybody ever tell you you’re a real ass? Oh, yeah, your partner, who knows you best. Put this on.”
She looked past me and winked at Dehan, then slipped a sling over my neck and fitted my arm in it. I gave Dehan the keys to my Jag and said, “To the station, Detective.”
A dull, penetrating ache had started in my shoulder and was sending the occasional needle into my back and lungs. I ignored them and put my hand on the captain’s shoulder. “The man we are hunting for, Captain, is Special Agent Paul Harrison, and I have got to be in at the kill. You understand that, right?”
He followed me to the car, gripping my arm, trying to pull me back. “What the hell are you talking about? Who the hell is Special Agent Paul Harrison?”
“He was the liaison between the Feds, Vincenzo and Pro, Maurice Learner, Vincenzo’s top hit man.”
“And what in the name of all that is holy, Stone, has he got to do with this?”
I opened the door to the passenger seat and heard the reassuring growl of the Jaguar firing up.
“I’ll fill you in at the station, Captain.”
We eased out of Coster Street and on to Viele Avenue. I slid back in the seat and gave myself a few seconds to indulge in shameless suffering. Dehan’s voice invaded my pain.
“I am this close to taking you to the hospital.”
I spoke without opening my eyes. “If you do, I will never be your date again. I’m fine, just give me a second, talk me through it.”
She sighed noisily.
“You were right, as usual, ‘H’ was Harrison. But he and Bellini were working behind Vincenzo’s back, using Father O’Neil to steal money from Conor Hagan, playing on his twisted ethics about serving his community.”
“A fact,” I said, wincing as a four-foot shard of glass stabbed through my right lung, “that Conor Hagan learned from Bellini, probably under torture, and exploited with some skill tonight.”
We joined the Bruckner Expressway and she began to accelerate.
“Yeah, he wrote off his hundred grand, or figured it was a fair price to pay to get the Italian Mob off his turf. What I am not clear about is whether he knew about Harrison.”
I nodded. “He indicated as much when we talked to him at the Shamrock, and it was him who insisted he should be there tonight.”
“Right, his payback to you for revealing Father O’Neil’s scam to him, but what I don’t get is how he could have known about Harrison.”
Maybe the pretty paramedic had given me a painkiller. The pain was subsiding and I was getting an agreeable floating sensation, like my body was drifting away from me. I smiled.
“Remember when we were hunting for Harragan? The Nelson Hernandez case? The original investigating officer in that case put us onto Special Agent Harrison as a way of contacting Pro, Vincenzo’s hit man, remember?”
“Of course, he was in witness protection.”
“Right. Pro and Mick were tight, because Mick facilitated the Jersey Mob’s operations in the Bronx. Harrison was Pro and Vincenzo’s man in the Bureau.”
“Okay, I get all that, but…”
“Well, Dehan, Mick was also Hagan’s facilitator, probably more so than anybody else’s, because they were both Irish. Mick would have bragged to Hagan about his man in the Bureau. Hagan would have known all about him.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“So he handed us Vincenzo and his man in the FBI, as an act of enlightened self-interest. He pays me back and at the same time gets the Italians out of his manor.”
We pulled up outside the precinct and she killed the engine. She sat looking at me like an angry mother. I tried not to snicker.
“I think she gave you morphine.”
“You should always have some in your kitchen cupboard.”
“You’re in no state to conduct an interrogation, Stone.”
I held up two fingers. “Just one question, Dehan, then you can take me home and mother me. But if ever you have trusted my judgment, trust it now.”
She got out and slammed the door, then helped me out and we walked together to the station house.
Vincenzo was in interrogation room six. When Dehan and I walked in, he pointed at me like his finger was a revolver and I half expected him to say, ‘Bang! Bang!’ Instead, he said, “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ to you until my lawyer gets here. Murder! Murder of a Bishop! Attempted murder! I am going to have your job, Stone! I am going to have your fuckin’ ass!”
I sat down and regarded him with a feeling of peace and goodwill that was entirely chemical.
“I can’t blame you for the way you feel, Alvaro. Anyone in your position would feel the same, I am sure.”
Dehan put her hand to her brow and discreetly covered her eyes. I managed to repress an inappropriate chuckle. It may even have been a giggle. I knew I had a very few minutes before I had to go somewhere and sleep.
“Just tell me something, Alvaro, because in the morning I am going to be thinking in terms of whether I can cut you a deal. I couldn’t see clearly, was it you who fired the shot that killed the officer, or was it Paul Harrison?”
“It was Paul. I didn’t fire a shot. It was Paul.”
“Thank you.” I stood. “I just wanted to confirm that Paul Harrison was there.” I turned to the uniform by the door. “You can put him in the cell now.”
He scowled at me as we left.
My legs were turning into anacondas as Dehan helped me down the stairs and into my car. As she climbed in next to me, I said, “Take me home, baby.” And after that, darkness enfolded me.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The sun was bright, too bright. My shoulder hurt, but I no longer felt high, or like giggling. Good smells of coffee and bacon, now inextricably linked with Dehan for all time, came to me from the kitchen. I was on the sofa, dressed. I raised myself on my good elbow, which meant I was uncomfortably facing the back of the sofa.
“What time is it?”
“Time you got up and had a doctor look at your dressing.”
“You done the first aid course?”
A sigh audible over the sizzling of bacon. “Yes…”
“You can do it. What time is it?”
“Ten.”
“Shit!”
I swung my legs off the sofa and suffered in silence for a few seconds. When the pain subsided, I said, “We need to interrogate Vincenzo. And Singh is coming at three.”
She carried the pan to the table and started putting bacon on the plates.
“You’ll interrogate, but first you’ll eat. The captain called.”
I stood. “Did they find Harrison?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Dammit!”
“But now the Bureau is hunting for him nationwide. They are embarrassed.”
“Damn right. They should be.”
I walked gingerly to the kitchen and sat. I tried removing my right arm from the sling but my shoulder told me that was a bad idea by setting fire to my arm. I made small gasping noises. Dehan put two eggs on my plate, then sat opposite and took my plate away from me. I watched her cut my toast, my eggs and my bacon into small, manageable pieces, then she put the plate in front of me again and put my fork in my left hand.
“Can you manage or you want me to feed you?”
“I can manage.”
She started to tuck in with her usual enthusiasm and vigor. “So explain something to me.”
“What?”
“Why the big to-do last night? You had to ask Vincenzo one question! Just one question! Who shot the cop, him or Harrison? We both saw clear as daylight who shot the cop.”
“Oh, that.”
“What? Oh that? What?”