Kane shrugged it off, telling O’Callahan that he was sure the police interview with Paglia had been videotaped. “Our friends at the district attorney’s office will fight tooth and nail to see that it’s admitted into evidence. In the meantime, I will make sure our public defender boy in the Legal Aid Society, who has been conveniently appointed to represent Mr. Garcia, does a poor job of opposing the prosecution’s motion to admit the videotape.
“And I believe the DA should be receiving that final bit of evidence putting Mr. Garcia at the scene any day now. There will be only one way—our way—for Mr. Garcia to avoid being convicted of murder and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, or perhaps death by lethal injection if Mr. Karp is so inclined.”
O’Callahan cautiously tried to point out that perhaps it was a little premature to kill Paglia. “Maybe the DA just wants to go over the facts with his star witness.”
“I said kill him,” Kane hissed. “Even if they don’t suspect anything, he’s dumb as a stick and might get tripped up. But first question him about whether he told anyone about this, like his bitch wife and their little brat. I haven’t decided yet if they need to join him in the great beyond, too.”
Kane could tell that O’Callahan still had reservations. Going to need to have a discussion about following orders without all the questions with that boy, he thought. However, he’d accepted the usual congratulations on the brilliance of his thinking. After all, he’s just being accurate.
Kane flipped the cell phone closed and looked up to see Phoebe watching him. He flashed his warmest smile. “Come on, Phoebe,” he said as he offered her his arm. “It’s showtime.”
20
THE FULL MOON WAS JUST RISING IN THE EAST ABOVE QUEENS as Vincent Paglia heaved his vast bulk up the stairs leading to the footbridge that crossed from Spanish Harlem over the East River to Randall’s Island. He wasn’t happy being in that part of town so late at night; he didn’t trust the spics, beaners, and Ricans, but he figured that at his size, most robbers would choose a less threatening target.
When he arrived a few minutes earlier, he’d parked behind the dark sedan of his handlers, as he thought of the men who’d brought him into this nightmare. He noticed that a twin of the sedan was pulled up at the corner and he could just make out the glow of the driver’s cigarette. He quickly turned his head, as he’d been told to ignore the second car: “They’re there for your protection.” Not that I believe that crap-o-la, he thought, but I got no choice.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Vincent paused to catch his breath and looked toward the middle of the bridge, where he saw two more dark figures in the moonlight. It was Thursday night, and he wished that he were home with his wife, Katie, a nice, big girl with plenty of meat on her, which, he joked to his friends “keeps my balls off the sheets.” She’d probably be in bed, as would their three-year-old daughter, Annie. If Katie was sleeping and not in the mood for a tumble, he’d probably see if he could catch a little baseball on ESPN, maybe place a few lazy bets if he could talk some bookie into taking his action. But the man on the phone had insisted on this meeting. There’d been a call at work Wednesday—something his boss had not been too happy about, especially when he then made an excuse that he wasn’t feeling so good and wanted to take the rest of the day off. He’d been told to go get a room at the American Hotel on Lexington and not to go to work the next day, either. He called Katie at the hotel and told her that he was going to go tie one on with his cousin in Jersey and sleep it off over at his place, hanging up rather than listen to the angry buzzing of her words.
Paglia sat in his room at the American watching sports on television until the guy called again, insisting that they meet at midnight on the footbridge. “Nothing to worry about,” the man said. “We just want to go over your story before the cops or the district attorney talks to you again.”
A midnight meeting on the bridge made him nervous. He didn’t like heights and he couldn’t swim, but more than that, he didn’t trust these men. They were stone-cold killers and he wasn’t. But as he waddled toward them, he tried to look at the bright side; if he played his cards right, not only would he be free and clear of the bookie who held his chits, there was a nice little payday at the end of the road from the record company. Minus the ten big he owed, he’d pocket forty thou…and a guy with his smarts and sports acumen could turn that into a couple million, easy.
After the murders, Paglia had been instructed to go home and wait for the cops to show up. To get Katie out of the house, he’d started an argument over sex, which always got her to pack up and head to her mom’s place in Brooklyn with Annie until she cooled off. Then when the detectives arrived, he “broke down” and told them his story as it had been prepared for him by his handlers.
Just to be sure, his handlers had given him a photograph of the Garcia kid. Then a few days later, he’d been called to go downtown and pick him out of a lineup…Which reminds me, I was supposed to burn the picture, better do that when I get home.
Now, he got to be the hero at the trial and collect the reward. He felt a little sorry for the kid, especially if they sent him to Death Row, but sometimes it just came down to every man for himself, and he had a wife and a little girl to consider.
As the men on the footbridge turned toward him, Vincent wished he’d insisted on a public meeting place. He’d suggested it, but they reminded him that they couldn’t be seen together. “For everyone’s safety.” Now, with sweat breaking out on his brow and soaking his armpits, he reminded himself that these guys needed him to finger the Puerto Rican. They couldn’t suddenly have their only witness disappear. Still, the weight of the gun he’d borrowed and never returned felt reassuring tucked into the waistband of the sweatpants he was wearing.
Vincent could see that the middle span of the footbridge had been raised so that there was a gap in the middle. It would remain that way until morning. He’d heard that it was because one of the loonies from the psychiatric hospital on the island had escaped one night and made her way to a subway platform, where she promptly pushed a businessman and father of four in front of a train. But there was something chilling about the gaping hole in the path, like it was waiting to swallow him. He recognized the men on the bridge as the two who’d first come down to the fish market and told him what was up. They were both about the same height; the subservient one was a little heavier than the leader, who held out his hand. “Hey, Vincent, thanks for coming,” he said.
As if I had a choice, Vincent thought. “No problem,” he said. “What can I do for you guys?”
The leader smiled, his teeth gleaming wolfishly in the moonlight. “We just wanted to go over a few things so that there’s no mess-ups,” the man said. “Sorry about dragging you out here at night, but you understand we have to be extra careful right now. We didn’ even want to talk about it on the cell phone. You know, it’s too easy for someone else to listen in.”
“I didn’ know that, but good thinkin’,” Paglia said. “But there’s nothin’ to worry ’bout. I was drivin’ the limo, looking for this address, when we got lost and pulled over to the curb. Then I see’d these two hoodlums walk up, one of them with a machine gun or sometin’. I take off running, but not before I get a good look at their mugs in the streetlight. They start blastin’ and I don’t stop movin’ till I get to Third and catch a cab. I’m scared ’cause I figure it’s a gang hit, and hide out until the cops come find me. Then I fingered the Puerto Rican kid.” He shrugged. “Simple enough.”
The leader smiled again. “Yeah, simple. Good job, ya got it down.” He strolled over to the railing and looked over. The water passing beneath the bridge appeared calm and slow, but he knew that looks were deceptive. That little bit of the East River was known as Hell’s Gate, so-called by sailors in the old days because of the powerful currents caused by the interplay of river and ocean tides. Those treacherous waters had carried many a ship onto the rocks, and drowned plenty who were unlucky enough to wind up in the wa
ters.
“Nice view, eh, Vincent,” the man said looking southwest at the skyline of Manhattan. He wasn’t worried about any passersby seeing them. The two others Vincent had seen in the other car were now at the bottom of the stairs to prevent any sightseers from approaching. “Hey, look at Gracie Mansion all lit up,” he said, pointing to the mayor’s residence on the banks of the river. “They must be having some sort of shindig.”
“Yeah, nice view,” Vincent replied, though he’d never given such sights much thought before. He was a city boy, lights were lights, and he didn’t like having to move closer to the edge of the bridge to hear the man. They were only fifty feet or so above the water, but to him it looked like two hundred.
“Now, Vincent, I need to ask you a question and you need to answer me honestly,” the man said without taking his gaze from the skyline. “And I’ll know if you’re lyin’. You know that, don’t ya?”
Vincent swallowed and nodded. He didn’t like the way this was going.
The man turned to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You won’t get in trouble so long as you tell me the truth, okay?” Vincent nodded again, so the man continued. “Have you left anything lying around like phone numbers or that photograph we gave you of the kid…just in case the police decided to look into your story? Not that they will, but we want to be safe. And please, Vincent, understand we’re looking after your best interests, as well as ours. We just want to be sure there are no loose ends that could come back to haunt either of us.”
Vincent doubted that the man had his best interests in mind, but the man probably had his own and he was sure that they still needed him. He resolved again to throw out the photograph when he got home. There was also a twinge of apprehension about the business card with the telephone number that he’d accidentally left in the limo. But no one had mentioned it, so he figured no one had noticed. “No,” he said. “I did like you said and burned the photo and memorized everything else.”
“Good. Good,” the man said. “Now have you told anybody ’bout this? Like your wife? I mean that would be understandable if you did. A little pillow talk between romps in the hay, ya know what I mean? That I could understand. No problem, I just need to know, in case Mrs. Paglia needs to go on a nice, paid vacation until this is all settled. Nothin’ worse than that, okay?”
Vincent shook his head. He’d thought about telling Katie. The killings weighed on his conscience. But she was a good girl, the sort who went to Mass several times a week. He’d promised her when the baby was born that he’d quit gambling. She’d warned him that she would leave him if she learned he was lying to her like her no-account father, who’d drank and gambled away every paycheck he’d ever received. She wouldn’t understand how he could have racked up ten thousand dollars’ worth of bad debt, and then had to go along with some murders to dig himself back out of the hole.
“Nah, I ain’t told nobody, including her,” he said. “She wouldn’ put up wit it.”
“That’s good, Vincent, that’s real good,” the man said, flashing that predatory grin, “because it’s better to be a widow than to be dead.”
It took Vincent Paglia a moment to realize the significance of the statement. Too late, he began to reach for the gun at his waist. There was a heavy pressure on his neck and then bada-bing, it was as if he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. His brain filled with a bright light and then the world went dark.
“Help me hold this pig up,” said the leader, who’d grabbed Vincent and propped him against the railing the moment his partner pressed the stun gun against the fat man’s neck.
The other man tossed the stun gun off the bridge and got a grip on his side of the twitching, unconscious body. Together they heaved Vincent Paglia up and over the rail and watched as he hit the water with an enormous splash and disappeared beneath the surface.
“No chance he’ll wake up and swim to shore?” the second man asked.
The leader scanned the surface of the water but, as expected, no large man had surfaced to stroke his way to the beach. “Nah, Tarzan himself couldn’t take a thousand volts and then swim in those waters,” he said. “With the tide running out, he won’t surface again, if at all, until they find him washed up on Long Island. An unfortunate suicide victim…all those gambling debts. Took the jump.” The man looked up. “Full moon tonight—all the crazies will be out.”
• • •
Three hours later, the moon was directly above and casting dense shadows among the trees in a part of Central Park known as the Rambles. Located just west of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the area lived up to its name with rambling, thickly forested hills and gullies that the architects of the park intended to leave in its wild state.
A careful observer, had any dared be about in that part of the park at that time of night, would have noticed that many of the smaller shadows near the ground were moving in the same general direction. Flitting from one dark spot to the next, some slipped upright through the brush like wraiths, while others scurried on all fours, squeezing beneath the undergrowth. For the most part they were silent except for the wheezing of lungs that spent too much time in cold and damp places without much sunshine or fresh air.
The careful observer may have also noticed that the moving shadows were spread out in a rough circle around a tall, wiry man who walked in their midst, his features hidden in the hood of his robe. Pulling back the hood, David Grale stopped and sniffed the damp air as his army of “mole people” skittered and snuffled along the carpet of old leaves. His dark hair hung in wet, lank strands around his thin face, which was as pale as the moon above the treetops. Whether it was the lunar lighting or an internal energy source of their own, a faintly mad glimmer shone in his eyes as he peered ahead in the direction that his followers were scampering. He sniffed again, catching the scent of rotting vegetation and beneath that the sickly-sweet odor of a greater corruption.
An emaciated creature appeared at his side. It was clothed mostly in rags, which barely covered the gray skin stretched too tightly over protruding bones. There was something almost amphibian about the way it hopped about and squatted on its haunches like a frog. The luminous eyes seemed impossibly large and protruded from its skeletal head, as it used its long, yellow fingernails to comb over the patches of what might have once been blond hair on its head.
“What news, Roger?” Grale asked the creature. The creature once known as Roger Pack had been a mildly successful stockbroker on Wall Street, but his affair with the bottle had destroyed his career, ruined his marriage, and in a manner not unlike a leaf swirling down from a tree in autumn, eventually brought him into the tunnels where he did not have to face what had become of his life.
Roger smiled. The few remaining teeth in his mouth gleamed yellow in the moonlight. “This way, Father,” he said. The words ending in s came out as a hiss. “Are you coming, Father. Thisss way. Thisss way.” He looked around and nervously licked his thin lips. As with many who lived in the deepest labyrinth of tunnels and sewers beneath the city, even moonlight and the distant glow of the streetlights and hotels of Fifth Avenue frightened him.
“It is an evil night,” Grale said. “But lead on, Roger. Let us see what mischief is afoot.”
“Yes, Father, an evil night, Father,” Roger replied. “But come, we are near. Can you smell them, Father?”
“Yes,” Grale replied. He’d long ago given up trying to disabuse his followers from referring to him as Father. In another life, he’d been an unordained Catholic lay worker, but that was enough for the miserable mole people, at least those who were not aligned with the forces of evil, to accept him as their spiritual guide and bestow upon him the title of priest. With him as their inspiration, they’d committed to his cause of hunting demons who he believed possessed the bodies of men in the dark places beneath the city, and sometimes above the tunnels, too.
Roger scampered into a tangle of growth ahead. Grale pushed through more slowly until he reached a small clearing on the o
ther side.
Tourists were sometimes surprised to learn that in a city of eight million people, many of whom walked its paths on a daily basis, there were parts of Central Park so wild that it was almost primal forest. No one went to these places—at least no one of good intent, unless necessary such as now.
When Grale’s eyes adjusted to the moonlight, he saw that a dozen mole people were gathered around two shallow holes that had been dug into the forest floor. It was from the holes that the smell of rotting flesh emanated. Walking up to them, he saw why. Lying in each hole was a human body—children by the size of them—though it was difficult to say for sure because of the amount of decay and the dirt that partly covered their naked corpses.
Even his mad mind shrank from the thought of what had possessed one of the mole people to come sniffing along here and then dig to get at what lay beneath the disturbed ground. They were forever hungry in the tunnels of the city, forever in search of something other than rat meat and the garbage they could scavenge from the Dumpsters late at night.
“Sheila found them, Father,” Roger said, pointing to another wretched soul who hovered near the graves. Bent over at the waist in the shape of a C, Sheila was naked except for a loin cloth that loosely covered her genitalia; her breasts were little more than folds of skin that hung like pale bats from her chest.
“Give me my prizes, Roger,” she whined. “Give me what is mine.”
Grale looked askance at Roger, who shot Sheila a dirty look before producing the prizes from the dark folds of his rags. He held them up and the moon flashed on medallions of gold that dangled from…“rosary beads,” Grale muttered. He’d expected Sheila’s treasure—it was not the first time he’d been to graves such as these—and yet it was always with a new sense of doom and sadness.
Among the demons he hunted were a number who hid within the Catholic priesthood, preying on children for their sexual needs. Several in the past month had felt the blade of his knife as it laid open their throats; after which they’d been carried down into the depths and left for the rats. But there was one he sought more than all the others, one monster worse than the rest…the one who left the rosary beads with the gold medallions of St. Patrick’s as his calling cards.
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