by R.J. Ellory
‘Why did she die, Ev? Why did she kill herself?’
Evelyn’s eyes widened. She looked momentarily surprised. ‘It isn’t obvious now?’
Harper shook his head.
‘To get away, John, to get away from Edward Bernstein and everything he represented. That’s why she killed herself, John. Finally, after everything that happened, it was the only way she could escape.’
THIRTY-THREE
Something about the smell of the water. A couple of weeks before, Duchaunak had been up at the Fire Boat Station and it had been exactly the same. Rank, fetid, corrupt almost. Something about the odor that stayed in his nostrils, hung on his clothes for some considerable time afterward. Combined now with the coppery taint of blood it tightened his throat, made his stomach turn.
Not the kind of job for a normal person, he thought, and watched as Don Faulkner stepped around the lake of blood and leaned closer to the battered form of a man.
A handful of seconds, really no more, and then Faulkner stood up straight, turned and nodded at Duchaunak. ‘It’s him alright, Frank.’
‘Sure?’
‘No question. Come see for yourself.’
Duchaunak stepped around the blood, reached out, and took Faulkner’s hand so as not to lose his balance, and then he too was squatting beside Micky Levin, a man he’d known almost as long as he’d known Edward Bernstein. There was no doubt really. No doubt of who it was. It had been more wishful thinking on Duchaunak’s part. These people – violent, brutal, utterly beyond redemption – were nevertheless the people that consumed the vast majority of his time. In essence they were his extended family. To lose one was to lose yet another person who somehow existed on the same wavelength, and whichever way Duchaunak looked at it it seemed an injustice. Ultimately, if all of them died or were incarcerated, then he would be alone. Duchaunak smiled to himself.
‘What?’ Faulkner asked.
Duchaunak shook his head.
‘You smiled at something.’
‘Nothing, Don . . . just a thought.’ Duchaunak stood up. ‘So what do we have here?’
‘Apart from blunt trauma, massive blood loss, and a dead Jewish gangster?’
‘Apart from that.’
‘I think we have the beginning of your war.’
Duchaunak opened his mouth to speak, but was cut short by the shrilling of his cellphone. He took it from his pocket.
The conversation was brief, terse almost, and the expression on Duchaunak’s face darkened like some incipient storm. Less than a minute and he closed the phone and returned it to his pocket.
‘We got a meeting with the man,’ he said quietly.
‘Aah hell,’ Faulkner said. ‘What the fuck now?’
Duchaunak stepped back and started to walk away from Micky Levin. ‘I don’t know, Don, I don’t know.’
‘Well, what are we going to do about Micky?’
‘Let the uniforms handle him. They’ll have someone down here shortly, someone from Homicide.’
Even as the words left Duchaunak’s lips a dark sedan came hurtling down towards the pier.
‘What’d I tell ya?’ he called out, and Faulkner hurried after him, unwilling now to share any words with the assigned Homicide Unit.
They made it away from the scene before any such challenge took place, and turning, looking back over his shoulder as the car pulled away, Don Faulkner wondered if it really could get as bad as he thought.
‘You’ve seen this before, right?’ he asked Duchaunak.
Duchaunak shook his head. ‘Not here, no. Chicago, maybe ten years ago, something like that. Early nineties, hadn’t long been in the Department. Was a war, territorial thing primarily.’
‘Bad?’
Duchaunak nodded. ‘Bad enough.’
‘You think we’re going to get such a thing here?’
Frank Duchaunak looked towards his left, out of the window into the Lower West Side. ‘Think it’s going to be worse, Don,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘Honestly, I think it’s going to be worse.’
*
Callbox near The Regent. Sol Neumann stands shivering while some fat guy gesticulates and shouts at someone on the phone. Eventually the fat guys maneuvers himself out of the box and rolls away down the sidewalk. Neumann leaves the door open. Fat guy left his body odor inside. Neumann dials a number, waits patiently.
‘News?’ he asks.
He frowns, starts to shake his head. ‘Look,’ he says, his voice firm, assertive. ‘There isn’t any fucking time for such things. You find him now. You go out there and find this black motherfucker right fucking now, you understand? It ain’t difficult. There’s people who know him. He lives in New York. He has family here—’
Neumann falls silent as he’s interrupted.
‘No, no fucking way. You listen to what I’m saying. I just saw Mr Marcus and we have hours. You understand what I’m telling you . . . we have hours. You get whoever the fuck you need and get out there and walk the fucking streets until you find this McCaffrey. That’s all there is to it. I’m calling back in two hours and there better be some fucking word on this asshole, okay?’
Neumann doesn’t wait for a reply. He slams the receiver back on its hook and barges out of the callbox. Seems to him that threats – implied or direct – work better than bonuses.
Cathy Hollander stands on the steps of the house. A quiet shadow of madness haunts her, follows her wherever she walks, waits for her around corners and reminds her that it is still there when she reaches it. It is a shadow that has been accompanying her for some considerable time. She wonders when this will end, and then reminds herself that she must not think such thoughts. Such thoughts lead only one way, and it is not a way she can afford to take.
She takes the last two steps, reaches up and presses the buzzer. She can hear it echo within. The sound of footsteps, a woman’s footsteps, and then the door opens and Walt Freiberg’s wife stands there smiling. She looks so much older than Cathy remembered her.
‘Hello dear,’ she says. ‘Come on in, Walt said you were coming over.’
Cathy takes a deep breath and crosses the threshhold.
‘You’ll be staying for lunch?’
Cathy says nothing.
‘Of course you will dear,’ Eleanor Freiberg says gently. ‘Let me take your coat.’
THIRTY-FOUR
After that word – escape – had left Evelyn’s lips there was silence in the kitchen on Carmine Street.
Perhaps, beyond the window, the world had ceased its revolutions. Perhaps not.
The world, whatever it was, whatever it might have represented, seemed to change in Harper’s mind. Its metamorphosis was swift and irreversible. Where he’d once held a memory of his mother he now possessed an awkward and distorted nightmare. Where there had been no father, no visible memory, no recollection at all, he now faced a brutal and unforgiving reality that he could not step away from no matter how hard he tried. What was once there was now absent; what was once absent now crowded against him like a vast and unrelenting wall of emotional pressure.
‘You want a drink?’ Evelyn asked. Her tone was gentle, almost sympathetic.
Harper looked up. He tried to smile. The muscles in his face did not respond well. He felt that his expression conveyed only pain and confusion.
Evelyn leaned forward and placed her hand over his. Her skin was warm and soft, the skin of someone old. ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ she said, and rose quietly from her chair.
Evelyn busied herself with glasses, a bottle of brandy, and when she returned to the table Harper found the thought he wished to express. The words did not follow and he experienced little more than abject hollowness.
Evelyn shook her head slowly as she sat down. ‘Don’t even try to think about it,’ she said. She poured brandy into both of the glasses, slid one across the table to Harper.
He lifted the glass and as the brandy touched his lips he inhaled sharply. The aroma of the spirit cleared his nostrils, pr
oduced a burning sensation behind his eyes. He drank it down in one go, waited for the warmth to fill his chest.
He set the glass on the table and Evelyn refilled it.
‘Everyone survives,’ she said.
Harper smiled weakly, shook his head. ‘No they don’t.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean, Evelyn, yes. But sometimes you reach a point where you wonder if surviving could ever be enough.’
‘Or if just surviving is all you will ever do?’ she said.
‘Is that really why she died . . . because she couldn’t escape?’
Evelyn looked down at her hands. She held her own glass carefully, as if afraid to break it. ‘She used to speak to me of how difficult it all was. Used to tell me things that she never would have told Edward, never would have told Garrett. I was her sister, we were closer than anything . . .’ Evelyn looked up. ‘Your mother never did anything by halves John. If she did something then she really did it. When she fell in love with Edward she really fell in love. It was never an insubstantial thing with Anne, never half-minded. Finally, after she realized that he wasn’t going to be your father, wasn’t ever going to be her husband, she felt there was no reason for her to go on. And then she took the most certain way out. Like I said, she never did anything by halves.’
‘And he knew that she committed suicide?’
‘Edward? Of course he knew. He came here afterwards, the day of your mother’s funeral, and he tried to take you away from me. Garrett stood up to him. Garrett knew what Edward Bernstein was capable of, but nevertheless he stood up to him.’ Evelyn smiled. ‘Don’t know that I was ever more proud of Garrett than I was that day.’
‘Where was I?’
‘I sent you away with a friend of mine . . . you remember a woman called Francine? Had a daughter, a year or so younger than you called Grace?’
Harper shook his head. ‘I don’t know . . . vaguely, I think.’
‘I sent you to her house for a few days. She took care of you until everything was over.’
‘What happened?’
Evelyn closed her eyes for a second. ‘You really want to know?’
‘Of course, Ev.’
‘He came and told me that he was your father, that he had a right to you now. He said that Anne would have wanted it that way, that she would have wanted you to be with him.’
‘And you didn’t agree?’
Evelyn laughed suddenly. ‘Agree with him? God no, not a prayer. I didn’t even have to think about it, and neither did Garrett. I don’t think Garrett knew what he was taking on, but he stood right there in the doorway—’ Evelyn raised her hand and pointed at the exit to the front hallway – ‘Right there. Garrett stood right there and prevented Edward from coming in here. I can see them now, Edward looking over Garrett’s shoulder and shouting at me, demanding that I tell him where you were. Garrett didn’t back down.’ Evelyn paused, smiled to herself.
‘What?’
‘He was scared. Garrett was scared alright. He had his hand behind his back and I could see him clenching his fist, his knuckles all white. He would never have raised his hand to Edward, never in a million years, but that day I believe he was ready to do whatever it took.’
‘And you thought it best I stay unaware of all of this . . . all these years?’
Evelyn said nothing for a moment, and then she smiled ruefully. ‘I asked something of that detective,’ she said. ‘Asked him if he’d ever made a decision, ever said something untrue because he thought it was best, and then couldn’t go backwards and undo the damage. That was how it was, John. I did what I thought was right at the time, and then the more time went on the more I felt it wasn’t necessary.’
‘Until now.’
Evelyn shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know, maybe . . . Christ, John, how can you ever judge what you would have done had circumstances been different? If Walt hadn’t called, if he hadn’t insisted I call you I don’t know what I would have done. Maybe I would’ve let Edward die—’
‘Maybe he won’t die, maybe he’ll recover.’
‘When did you go over there last?’
Harper thought for a moment. ‘Yesterday. They have him in a room by himself, like an intensive care room.’
‘If there’s any justice in the world he will die,’ Evelyn said coldly.
‘I don’t think Detective Duchaunak wants him to die.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Evelyn replied. ‘I think for some considerable time our detective has been obsessed with Edward Bernstein.’
‘You were going to tell me about that. There was someone who died back then? When was it, 1997?’
Evelyn nodded. She didn’t speak.
‘And he told me some things about a girl that hangs around with Walt Freiberg, a girl who was apparently involved with Edward for some months, and then before that with someone called Marcus.’
‘Ben Marcus?’ Evelyn asked.
Harper looked up.
Evelyn’s eyes were wide, her expression anxious, and Harper said ‘Yes, Ben Marcus. Why? You know him?’
‘Of him . . . I know of him,’ she said. ‘Walt Freiberg is involved with Ben Marcus now?’
‘I don’t know Evelyn. I don’t seem to know a great deal of anything going on here, remember?’
Evelyn leaned forward. ‘You shouldn’t see him again John,’ she said. Her voice was quiet but direct. ‘I know you won’t go back to Miami, not until you know what happens with your father, but—’
‘Duchaunak said the same thing,’ Harper interjected. ‘That I should leave New York.’
‘He said it for a reason,’ Evelyn said.
‘What is it with him? Why is he so obsessed with my father?’
Evelyn shook her head and sighed. ‘Because he believes that Edward is responsible for all of his unhappiness.’
Harper frowned. ‘You what?’
‘Detective Duchaunak believes that Edward Bernstein destroyed his life.’
‘Destroyed his life? Isn’t that a little melodramatic?’
‘No, John, not melodramatic. Not when you understand what happened to him.’
Harper leaned forward. ‘So what happened?’
Evelyn smiled, almost sardonically. ‘He believes that Edward was responsible for the death of Marilyn Monroe.’
Harper started laughing. ‘What the hell—’
‘I’ll tell you,’ Evelyn interjected. ‘I’ll tell you what happened back in November of ’97.’
THIRTY-FIVE
Captain Michael McLuhan. Third generation Irish-American; face like a wrestling match. Sharp words, often abrupt, a naturally awkward and aggressive nature. Seven kids though, eldest nineteen, youngest eleven; almost one a year once he got started, and when he spoke of them his entire demeanor and manner changed. When he talked of his children he could have been some compassionate gentle soul. Cops who worked for him knew him well. When he called – when he wanted some facetime – well, if you were smart you opened your mouth first, opened it as soon as you entered his office. Smart cops in trouble said ‘Captain McLuhan, how are the kids doing?’ as the very first thing, and the stripes he gave them for whatever they’d done were always less in number and scarred infrequently. Mention his family before he got a chance to tear you a new asshole, and the odds were on coming out of that office still walking straight.
Now it was Duchaunak and Faulkner, both of them seated on the other side of his desk.
‘So?’ Captain McLuhan asked Duchaunak.
‘Micky Levin,’ Duchaunak replied.
‘No question?’
‘No question.’
‘And we had a dead Johnnie Hoy a little while ago.’
Duchaunak nodded. ‘We did indeed.’
‘And your take on this?’
‘They’re starting a war.’
‘A war?’ McLuhan leaned back in his chair. He put his hands behind his head.
‘A war.’
‘Between . . .
?’
‘Walt Freiberg and Ben Marcus.’
McLuhan nodded. He glanced at Faulkner. Faulkner said nothing; carried the slightly distant expression of a man who was on the edge of a fight and wasn’t looking to get hurt.
‘And why would there be a war starting between Walt Freiberg and Ben Marcus?’
Duchaunak frowned. ‘The territories?’ he said, a rhetorical question, his tone a little disbelieving. ‘That, and the fact that I believe Ben Marcus did the hit on Lenny Bernstein. You know about the bullet—’
‘Bullet?’ McLuhan asked. ‘Oh, let me think now . . . do you mean the bullet that they dug out of Lenny Bernstein which matched some gun used in a robbery thirty years ago?’
‘Yes,’ Duchaunak said. ‘Garrett Sawyer was questioned on that robbery. Garrett was married to Evelyn Sawyer, and she was the sister of Anne Harper who had a child with Bernstein—’
McLuhan rolled his eyes, then looked at Faulkner with an expression that spoke of patience stretched to its limit. ‘You’re still hobby-horsing this whole thing, aren’t you? The number of conversations you and I have had about Edward Bernstein and Walt Freiberg, about Marcus and Neumann and the whole lot of them—’
‘For very good reason—’ Duchaunak started.
‘Don’t interrupt me, Frank,’ McLuhan said sharply. He withdrew his hands from the back of his head and gripped the arms of the chair. ‘I am not in a good mood today. Not only do I have to deal with you pair, I have to deal with some whacko who’s killed a brother and a sister, beat the pair of them to death on different days in different places. The girl was a nurse for Christ’s sake, Jessica McCaffrey, and Sampson has to go tell her relatives that both her and her brother have been killed. I am already a man on the edge, and the last thing I need is to be interrupted while I’m talking. There are very few things that upset me more than being interrupted Detective Duchaunak.’