88 Killer

by Oliver Stark

  Carney pulled himself up from the floor. ‘I don’t care a damn for her! Lucy, you understand? Fuck you all. Fuck her. I’ll show you. I’ll show her too. I’m going to be written about for years.’ He pointed the gun at Harper’s face.

  Then at the door, he heard a shout. ‘Drop your weapon.’ They turned and saw Denise Levene step in the door. She raised her gun. ‘Move away from the bucket, victim,’ she shouted.

  Carney let out a laugh. ‘You too.’ His hand started to turn.

  ‘Don’t try it, victim!’ she told him.

  Carney saw her fear and smiled. ‘You wouldn’t dare – that’s your problem, isn’t it?’

  ‘Try me,’ she said. Denise remembered everything Mac had told her. She wasn’t afraid; she was the hunter – not him. She fired, two quick rounds, into the wall. Carney’s hand stopped moving. ‘Drop the weapon.’

  ‘You don’t want to kill your beloved detective, do you, Dr Levene?’ sneered Carney. ‘You shoot me and I’ll put a bullet through his head.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Denise. ‘It’s over now. We know – Blue Team knows. They’re on their way. We found you, Jack. We traced the book on Sturbe, traced your lending record. It’s all there. Jack Carney’s self-hatred. The Jew who couldn’t stand to be a Jew.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Carney.

  ‘And you know what, Carney? We understand how it happened.’

  ‘What do you understand?’ ‘You were searching for your mommy, weren’t you? That lovely Jewish woman who abandoned you. The one who gave you your Jewish blood then dumped you on a group of Gentiles. Confusing for a kid, wasn’t it? It’s not unusual, Jack, to become obsessed, to identify with your attackers, to try to destroy the part of yourself you think they hate. You’re not a special case, you’re just a boy who didn’t grow up properly – not emotionally. You learned to hate yourself.’

  ‘So clever and so wrong.’

  ‘Really? We found your mother, Jack. She borrowed the same books as you. Every book you read, she read a week later. She was looking out for you all that time. Must’ve been watching you. Desperate to contact you, but scared. Her name was Hannah Sternberg.’

  ‘Sternberg?’

  ‘She left you when you were five. I guess what happened was that you only vaguely remembered her name. There weren’t any adoption records. That’s partly why your parents hated your Jewishness. What they did was illegal: take a child off a twenty-year-old Jewish girl with no other options. So you searched for your mother, didn’t you? For a name you could only half-remember. Sterne, Sterne-be. Sturbe. You came across this Nazi, and he made sense to you, right? You thought it was some incredible truth about you. And you devoured it and replaced all that loss and pain with this monster.’

  Jack looked shaken. He stepped backwards. He was finding it hard to take in. ‘Is she alive?’

  ‘She wants to see you, Jack.’

  Carney lowered his head. ‘It’s too late,’ he spat. ‘It’s way too late for that Jewish whore to save you, any of you. I’m going to make you all pay for this. I’m going to finish this for good. I must complete the transformation. I have it all planned. There is nothing else to do.’ He fired suddenly without lifting his head. The bullet hit the door. Denise threw herself against the wall. It was enough. Carney rose quickly, pushed past her and darted out of the lock-up.

  Chapter One Hundred and Eleven

  Crown Heights, Brooklyn

  March 15, 10.33 a.m.

  The orange truck was heavy over the potholes, the back end lifting and heaving on the old springs. Carney tapped impatiently on the steering wheel. He turned too quickly into 82nd Street. The van lurched high on its suspension and sat flat with a jolt.

  ‘Damn roads. City’s run by fucking monkeys.’

  Still, that didn’t matter now, did it? He felt the walls moving in. Harper had survived. They all knew. Everyone would now be chasing Jack Carney. It had to be now. Nothing mattered any more. Not anyone, either. Friends, colleagues. Screw the lot of them. All except one.

  There were still things he wanted to say to Lucy. Their separation had never made sense to him. All that talk about his behavior and her need for freedom. All that he had understood when she ended things was that she had rejected him because he was a Jew. And then she had started dating Capske – a Jew. The insult was unbearable, so much so that he could hardly let himself think about it. The implication was clear – it wasn’t his Jewishness that offended her, it was just him. Carney felt the anger rise again; he still nurtured the wounds as if they were fresh cuts.

  He felt the weight of thirty years of being oppressed by the filth who now ran this country. He felt their betrayal as a stream of invective. The Nazi slogans and racist bile jumbled in his mind.

  He hit the steering wheel hard with the heel of his hand. ‘Shit alive, I hate this fucking world.’ He drove on with a determined expression. Past an NYPD Charger with two asshole cops eating in the front seats. One Hispanic and one black.

  ‘Take a fucking look at that, Josef, that’s who we answer to now. The fucking parasites are leading the beasts.’

  Carney patted his antique Luger pistol, pressed hard against his hip, raised his hand towards the officers and formed a gun with his fingers. They didn’t bat an eyelid as they watched the bright orange truck trundle by.

  He turned into the street and pulled to a halt halfway down. He looked over at the big mansion on the corner. The location had been carefully chosen. The synagogue lay at the eastern end, but it would be empty today. The Museum of Tolerance to the west, however, would be full of Jew-lovers. It was the perfect target. He reached for a pair of binoculars and brought the façade into sharp focus. It was a nice building. Gothic. It looked like a French château. Another example of the fakery ruining the western world.

  To the left and right, the leafless trees had green buds beginning to emerge. It gave him an uninterrupted view. He checked his watch. The doors to the Museum of Tolerance would open soon enough, the crowds would enter and then he would start his work.

  Carney thought of himself as a security expert. He told people willing to listen that he was an ex-Marine. In truth, he’d never made the Marines and ended up as a cop. He had become a good cop too, keeping his leanings hidden and his need for power in check, satisfied by seeing the destruction of others through his work with Hate Crime.

  Maybe the assholes who were running this investigation would get to him, but he didn’t think so. He’d outsmarted them before, but not on this scale. This would give the truth about the Jewish conspiracy the maximum chance to get proper billing. Every story needed a picture and this would be it, a shattered street and a screaming line of hostages. He would make them recite the eighty-eight words into the camera, standing tied up in a bomb-shattered street. That was how it had gone in his mind, over and over again.

  Carney took out his gun and held it as he watched the people start to gather at the Museum of Tolerance on the corner. It was a crisp spring morning, still below zero. He chewed on a piece of gum and watched as cars and people bustled by. All the time, Carney was counting the visitors entering the museum.

  He drove the truck another hundred yards and parked right outside the museum next to an old beige bus, as close as he could so that the truck wasn’t visible from afar.

  He got out quickly before anyone had the chance to question him, went into the back of the truck to set things up, then emerged carrying two metal crutches. He locked up and moved away. He limped towards the museum.

  Chapter One Hundred and Twelve

  Brooklyn

  March 15, 10.45 a.m.

  Harper had seen the truck leaving and caught two numbers on the license-plate. It was an orange Dodge, but he didn’t catch its tail. By the time he was out on to the street where Denise’s car was parked, the orange truck had disappeared.

  Harper and Denise called backup, but it was already in the street. They heard the sirens getting closer. Harper pulled back the bolts and moved acro
ss to Lucy.

  Denise rushed to the exhausted body of Abby Goldenberg. She knelt at Abby’s side, stroked her face and looked down at her. ‘You okay?’

  Abby managed to nod, but the last few minutes had left her reeling, her eyes closed.

  Harper helped Lucy to her feet and walked her out of the brick cell. He looked across to Denise. ‘You want to get her out?’ he said.

  ‘We need a gurney, Tom, she’s very weak.’

  ‘We got to get on Carney’s tail, Denise. Soon as backup gets here we go, right?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. Denise looked at Abby’s eyes. She was still the girl in the photographs, the beautiful, bright teenager, but the experience had left her gray and gaunt. ‘You’re going to be just fine,’ said Denise. ‘If I can do it, Abby, and I’m half as willful as you seem to be, then you’ll be back on your feet in no time.’

  Abby’s eyes flickered open. ‘Where’s my daddy?’

  Denise held her hand. ‘We’ll get him for you, dear. He’s fine. He never gave up. He’s been helping all this time, helping the cops find you.’

  ‘I knew he wouldn’t let anything happen,’ said Abby. ‘I felt him here the whole time.’ Then the girl’s face contorted and Denise tried to calm her. The noise of the squad cars and ambulances broke in from behind.

  Denise turned as the uniformed cops entered with two paramedics. ‘Let’s get you to hospital, Abby. You need a little attention first.’

  Denise let the paramedics take the girl. ‘You ready?’ she said to Harper. She steeled herself. It wasn’t over, not yet. The predator had ousted the victim once and for all, but the prey wasn’t down.

  Harper ran for the exit, Denise followed. They jumped into a squad car and Harper started to drive.

  ‘Where we going?’ said Denise. ‘Carney’s got nowhere to go. He’s going to do something bad. We just have to try to get to him first. Every cop in New York will know about him by now.’ Harper called Lafayette as he drove. ‘What have you got set up?’

  ‘We’ve got all the bridges in Manhattan covered. Ditto all routes in and out of New York. He’s circled, Harper. An orange truck won’t go unnoticed. We got hundreds of men out there. It’s going to show up. It’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘He’s going to do something,’ said Harper. ‘You alerted Counter-Terrorism?’

  ‘All Hercules squads are live and active. If we get one sniff of him, he’s ours.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Harper. ‘I’m worried about it, though. He’s known this day is coming for a while now.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lafayette. ‘We’re doing what we can.’

  ‘Parkways and expressways covered?’

  ‘Yep, like I said, we’ve got patrols on all major routes in and out.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s leaving. I think Carney knows this is over.’

  ‘He’s a dead man walking,’ said Lafayette.

  ‘No,’ said Harper, ‘he’s a ticking bomb.’

  Harper hung up and continued to drive. He felt the frustration of being unable to do a goddamn thing. Denise had been trying to make calls on her cell phone.

  ‘How was Abby?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s pretty messed up, but the light’s still in her eyes,’ said Denise. ‘I guess she’ll be okay. I tried to call Aaron. He’s not at home and his cell went straight to message. He’s going to scream.’

  ‘He’s a lucky man. Down to you, Denise. You did good. Real good.’

  ‘We did good. What did Lafayette say?’

  ‘Nothing seen or heard yet, but roads are covered everywhere.’ Harper cast his eye down another side street. ‘I need something on Carney,’ he said. ‘What’s he going to do?’

  ‘You want my analysis?’

  ‘Yes. You got anything?’

  ‘He’s going to make a final gesture,’ said Denise. ‘He’s a cornered animal now, there’s no way out.’

  ‘I know, but what’s it going to be?’

  ‘Josef Sturbe was there on the last day of the ghetto.’

  ‘And what happened on the last day?’ said Harper.

  ‘The Nazis blew up the Great Synagogue of Warsaw.’ Harper’s mind raced. ‘God help us, if that’s what he has in mind.’

  Denise nodded to herself. ‘He might. It’s symbolic – a final action. I remember reading the reports by one SS officer. He said: “What a wonderful sight!” when looking at the burning synagogue.’

  Harper called Lafayette immediately. ‘He might be going for a synagogue. Send the word out, get the patrols to every single one.’

  Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen

  Museum of Tolerance, Brooklyn

  March 15, 10.48 a.m.

  Inside the lobby of the Museum of Tolerance, Carney stopped and took out a handkerchief. He wiped his brow and leaned down to feel his leg with a grimace. He tried to move on his metal crutches. The two security men stared across. One of them said something to the other. Carney’s training told him two things about getting through security – get noticed and then get the guards themselves noticed. Guards don’t like to be embarrassed.

  Carney acknowledged their look and started over to them. His right leg slipped from under him and he sprawled to the floor, his leg lying straight as if injured. Carney yelled in pain. He tried to push himself to his feet but he couldn’t get up. One of the beefcakes moved slowly across.

  ‘Help me!’ Carney shouted.

  The guard looked awkward as he crossed the marble floor.

  ‘Sorry, man, this is real embarrassing,’ said Carney. ‘I can’t get this attached without a seat.’

  ‘No problem, sir. I’ll fix you up.’ The guy put his hands under Carney’s arms, picked him up and helped him across to a bench seat.

  ‘God, I hate these injuries. Humiliate the life out of me at every moment,’ said Carney.

  ‘How’d you hurt the leg?’

  ‘Afghanistan,’ said Carney.

  ‘You in the service?’ asked the security guard.

  ‘Yeah, until the IED blast. You’re a soldier too, right?’ said Carney.

  The security guard showed his tattoo. A Marine. Carney nodded.

  ‘Those bastards bombed the fuck out of us and what did our government do? They withdrew troops.’

  ‘It’s too bad.’

  Carney shook his head. He felt close to tears. Sincere tears. He pushed down his jeans and stood up.

  ‘I gotta thank you, fella.’

  ‘Not a problem. Good to help a soldier.’

  Carney stood up and, with the aid of his crutches, hopped towards the gate with the security guard. ‘I hope I didn’t embarrass you.’

  ‘Not at all. War wound is something to be proud of.’

  ‘You’re a real gent.’ Carney pointed at the metal detector. ‘You don’t want me to hop through there without these babies, do you? I’ll be flat on the floor again if you do.’

  ‘No, man, that’s cool, just walk through.’

  Carney walked through. The machine beeped. He stopped and turned.

  ‘Am I all right to go on?’

  ‘Sure, man, take it easy.’

  Carney walked slowly down the corridor away from the gate. He could feel the sweat soaking his shirt and his hands shaking, but he was smiling now, not that they could see it. He found the elevator, pressed the button and waited.

  The problem was that Lucy was about the only person he’d ever felt safe with. Why was it? Why was he so complicated? A Jew who was not a Jew, who hated Jews, who was betrayed by a Jew. He had felt safe with hatred. Hatred silenced all his self-loathing.

  Carney walked into the bathroom on the second floor. He felt warm and flushed. He threw water over his face. She’d remember him after today, wouldn’t she? In the mirror, a worn-out man stared back at him. Older than his years. He was tired, red and looked mad as hell. In his head, he’d felt like a hero. He turned his face away quickly.

  He took out a folded piece of paper from his coat pocket and opened it up. On it, the wo
rds looked small and hazy. He couldn’t focus, even in the bright fluorescent lights of the toilet. He recited the words. One powerful paragraph. Only eighty-eight words.

  Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen

  Crown Heights, Brooklyn

  March 15, 11.02 a.m.

  Harper made a judgment. Crown Heights had the largest number of synagogues in the area. He picked up Denise from the hospital. He needed someone with knowledge of Brooklyn. They drove towards the first on his list. He stopped and got out of his car, stretched his neck to get a good look up and down the street. Denise got out beside him.

  ‘Anything?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Harper. ‘Let’s try the next.’

  Harper saw a huge flock of starlings rise in a single movement from the rooftops. He looked up. It was a moment, that was all. He didn’t have time to wonder. A second later, a massive explosion ripped through the morning air with a horrifying shriek of violence. In a heartbeat, the world had changed once again.

  At the shock of the explosion, Harper dived. His knees bent, and almost instantly as the first soundwave rushed by, he darted towards Denise with an outstretched arm, using his body to shield her. His mind was still taking in the noise, his body in adrenalin production, as he held Denise close to his chest. Time slowed. The blast lasted under a second, but the soundwave continued, lessening, widening like a gunshot disappearing over a plain, ricocheting off tall buildings.

  A second after the blast, the treetops rushed with sudden air. Then the air was still.

  And for a fragment of a second, it was so quiet. Maybe it was longer. It seemed longer. The silence seemed to hang in the air. Then someone took off the pause button and the scene burst to life with the shriek of car alarms and children crying.

  Harper and Denise stood up. The blast had been close. Close enough for them to feel the shockwaves. Close enough for them to hear the raw burst of force and pressure. Maybe half a mile away, or less.