Lesser Evils

by Joe Flanagan

  “She didn’t see anything.”

  McCarthy watched Semanica sit down on the edge of the bed and start opening the pill bottle. “Why is Grady mad at me?” he said.

  McCarthy slipped the revolver out of its holster and shot Semanica once, hitting him under the right arm. He dropped the pills, looked upward, wincing, and toppled sideways on the mattress and then onto the floor. From behind, McCarthy heard the girl make a pleading noise. He pointed the gun at her, aligning the sights at a point just below her ear. At that second, there was a loud pounding on the door, two hard blows that shook the room. McCarthy moved the barrel a foot to the left and fired two shots through the door.

  When Jenkins heard the gunshot, he sprinted across the parking lot, his revolver out. He stopped in front of the room and delivered two hard kicks to the door. Two shots rang out from inside and his face and left arm were stung with flying splinters. He stepped to the side and planted himself against the wall. In the rental office, the telephone rang. The night manager picked it up and in a shaky voice, said, “Kismet, this is Elaine.”

  “This is Officer Welke with the Barnstable police department. I was just talking to a Detective Jenkins. Is he there?”

  “Yes. And you better hurry. There’s been gunshots.”

  Father Boyle left the Dairy Queen and drove north until he was among the towering conifers, his headlights illuminating the ferns and underbrush. He was driving fast, practically ecstatic with the release of giving himself over to instinct.

  He glanced over at Mike as they plunged into a dip in the road and the undercarriage scraped the pavement, the boy cowering in the seat beside him. The road took two sharp turns in the shape of an S. Father Boyle barely made the first and lost control on the second, plunging into a shallow ravine, the car coming to a stop with two wheels off the ground, the passenger side buried into an embankment.

  Father Boyle looked around. He undid the latch on his door and forced it open with his foot. “You won’t be able to get out your side, Mike,” he said. “You’ll have to come out this way.”

  Mike was trembling, crying silently, every now and then a whimper escaping his lips. “I want my dad.”

  Father Boyle took him gently by the wrist and guided him across the seat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “Where are we going?” Mike asked in a tremulous voice. Father Boyle did not answer but took him by the hand and led him into the forest.

  Mike began sobbing. They walked into the thick cover, mounting an incline that Father Boyle knew eventually leveled off, then thinned out to the moors over the Atlantic.

  Warren was wading through thick atmosphere. He didn’t know if he was sleeping or stranded somewhere in the tentative world between slumber and wakefulness. He thought he saw his father—just in front of him but somehow far away, unreachable. He was in a field of tall golden grass in a summer shirt, suspenders, and a straw boater. The old man smiled—an expression that was rare in Warren’s recollection of him—and motioned. Warren didn’t know what it meant, was lost in the bright haze of the vision, awash in the aura the past had brought with it, flowing around the moment like a fragrance, like the fine, pleasant turbulence of its passing. Warren could see a boy. Who was he? He felt Little Mike’s hand in his, heard his voice say, “I will be all right.” Warren looked around him, or did so in a dream, but he could not see his son.

  48

  In the room at the Kismet, George McCarthy drew the blinds back just enough to look out at the parking lot. He didn’t see anyone. He looked at Semanica lying on the floor. He was gurgling and trying to spit blood out of his mouth but he seemed to lack the strength to do it. He opened the door and rushed out to his car, looking around, his gun out in front of him. From a doorway to his left, there was a loud crack. He heard the round buzz about three feet in front of him. He crouched and sprinted. Another shot blew up a hail of dirt and gravel at his heel. A third blasted the lens on one of his headlights and sent the chrome trim ring sailing off into the darkness. McCarthy turned, let off his three remaining rounds, and ran back to the room, slamming the door behind him. He picked up the phone and called the Elbow Room.

  “This is George. We got trouble.”

  “What?”

  “I’m in a motel down 28 and there’s guns involved.”

  Welke sped down 28, looking for the motel. Over the past few days, Jenkins had told him what he knew about organized crime on the Cape. He even raised the possibility that the state police captain, Stasiak, could be involved. Since Jenkins had gone out of his way to keep their communication off the police network, Welke assumed that whatever he was up to, it was related. But now, with the report of gunfire, he wondered whether to call the entire shift in. Then Jenkins’s voice came up on the radio, mumbling and veiled, conveying a strange alarm: “Easy seventeen to Easy nine, 10-18.”

  Welke responded, “Easy nine en route, code two.”

  Catching Jenkins’s use of the 10-18 code—which meant “urgent”—dispatch came up on the radio: “KCA374 to Easy seventeen. Please advise on your status.”

  Welke listened to see if Jenkins would respond. He did not. The dispatcher radioed Welke. “Easy nine. Status?”

  Welke hesitated, unsure of whether to answer, and just as he was getting ready to pick up the handset and report that Jenkins might be in trouble, he spotted the entrance to a ratty-looking motor court called the Kismet.

  Jenkins stood behind his vehicle, reloading his revolver and watching the door to the motel room, when two cars appeared. They stopped and half a dozen men piled out. He radioed Welke with a 10-18 code. The Barnstable dispatcher wanted to know what was going on and Jenkins, who had decided it was no longer wise to keep everything under wraps, lifted the radio to his mouth, ready to respond, when one of the men strode forward with a raised pistol. Jenkins put down the radio, raised his own weapon, and shouted, “Police,” but his voice was drowned out by an eruption of popping sounds accompanied by flashes. He was sprayed by a shower of glass from his car windows and heard the heavy metallic clang of a round striking the sheet metal. Jenkins was armed with his police issue .38 revolver, but had also brought a Browning nine-millimeter automatic, which he now stuffed into his rear pocket, then bolted toward the building. He hurled himself shoulder first at the picture window of one of the rooms, the heavy shards falling all around him as he landed on the floor with his feet sticking out through the opening. Outside, he could hear them yelling, running footsteps coming toward him. He looked around the darkened room and dashed toward a door on the right. He tore it open and was looking into an adjacent room.

  He went through and barricaded the door with the dresser. Then he opened the outside door a crack, got down on the floor, and peered out. They were out in the open, all of them carrying guns, their attention on the broken window. He could hear them moving around in the room next door, overturning the beds, frames and all. Jenkins heard someone say, “He’s in here.” The door moved against the dresser. He threw the dead bolt on the exterior door and secured the chain, then he got down behind one of the beds, holstered his revolver, and drew the automatic.

  They began throwing their weight against the door. The dresser wasn’t much of an obstacle. Now they were kicking in the exterior door, too. Jenkins saw a head appear over the top of the dresser. He pointed the muzzle of the automatic at the dresser, calculating where the person’s midsection would be. The weapon kicked back in his hand and he heard a yell, the head dropping out of sight. The door to the outside broke free of its dead bolt. A last kick snapped the chain and the door flew open. No one appeared in the entrance. Suddenly, there was an eruption of gunfire outside. Jenkins, crouched behind the bed in the dark with his pistol trained alternately on one door and then the other, inched his way down the wall toward the exterior door and looked outside. He saw three men behind the green Pontiac. Facing them, about ten yards away, was a Barnst
able police cruiser.

  Jenkins rushed outside just in time to see one of the Pontiac’s windows exploding. Out in the open parking lot now, he ran at a crouch until he reached the other side and dove into a row of bushes that were growing along the edge of a drainage ditch. He was shin-deep in water but out of sight. Jenkins got down in a prone position beneath the branches. He saw Welke, barricaded behind his cruiser, firing at the men behind the Pontiac. Jenkins selected one of them and aligned his sights. He let a round go and they all ducked. At the same instant, a picture window in one of the rooms shattered and fell out of its frame in a cascade of glass. He took aim again and fired. They stayed down, no longer shooting, and suddenly, realizing they had been outflanked, ran all together into one of the rooms.

  Working his way toward Welke, Jenkins slipped and fell in the water. He heard a bullet zip past him, clipping the branches and leaving a fading howling sound in the air. He called out at the top of his lungs, “It’s Jenkins! I’m coming out. To your right. In the bushes.”

  Father Boyle led Mike through the tall grass. He searched the undulating landscape around him, looking for the large sunken meadow. They were on high ground, within view of the great dark Atlantic, both of them panting from the effort. It seemed to Father Boyle as if he had been wandering most of the night when he kicked one of the large round rocks he’d earlier placed as a marker. Then there was a stick, shoved into the soft sand of a hillock, positioned so it would be visible from the path. Father Boyle emerged at the edge of the hollow. He descended through the brush and seated Mike on a flat rock that was there at the bottom, where the ground leveled out. He circled the boy and summoned his resolve.

  The FBI agents were crowded into the small suite at the Sea Mist. They had called Warren’s home repeatedly but got no answer. They tried the boatyard but he was not there. Two agents drove to General Patton Drive and found the lights on, the front door unlocked, and the rear door wide open. The house was deserted. One of the agents came in from the adjacent room where they were monitoring local police radio traffic.

  “Has he called yet?” Baldesaro asked.

  “No.”

  “Anything from the wife?”

  “No, but there’s been shots fired at a motel in Hyannis. The Barnstable police are involved. Sounds like a gunfight because they’ve called for support.”

  Warren looked through his eyelashes. There was the boy again. He looked troubled, doomed. Warren’s throat burned and he needed to clear it or swallow but he suppressed it and shut his eyes tight against the pain.

  He listened but he could not hear them. He sat up and looked over the side of the tub. On the floor was an assortment of knives, cleavers, and various kinds of clippers. Warren leaned over the edge, lowered his cuffed hands to the floor, and picked up a carving knife. He tried to get up and heard a door open. Voices in the kitchen. He lay back down and slipped the knife under his shirt, concealing its handle in his fist. The boy came in again and sat on the edge of the tub. He untied Warren’s shoes and removed them, placing them outside the bathroom door. Warren watched him through barely open eyes. He took a pair of surgical scissors and made a motion to reach for the hem of Warren’s T-shirt when something worked free in Warren’s throat, something trickling down—blood, he imagined—that caused him to make a slight sound. The boy froze. Steve Tosca walked in. He kicked at the pile of tools on the floor. “Where’s the clippers, Bobby?”

  “They’re right there.”

  “Not those. The curved ones. The curved clippers for the cartilage. Ha-ha. You don’t like that, Bobby, do you? Are you all right? You look fucked up.”

  “I’m O.K.”

  “Go out to the truck and get them.”

  Tosca sat on the toilet and sorted through the tools. The boy knew. The boy saw him move and still he said nothing. Tosca came up with something in his hand. Warren could not see what it was. He was going to have to make two motions, one to draw the knife out of his shirt, and the second to thrust. He tried to see through his eyelashes what Tosca was doing—he was leaning over him now—and thought frantically for a way to reduce everything to one quick motion. But Tosca then touched something to his throat and it pinched and then stung, and Warren realized that he was going to cut him. He jerked the knife out from under his shirt and blinked his eyes open. Tosca’s eyes went wide and he planted a hand on Warren’s left shoulder, pinning him down in the tub. Warren thrust upward and hit him in the side, driving the point of the big knife through Tosca’s shirt somewhere beneath his arm. Tosca dropped what he had in his hand and backed away from the tub. Warren thrashed around, trying to get up. Tosca reached down for one of the tools on the floor. Warren rushed at him, holding the knife with both hands, but tripped on the tub edge and sprawled out on the floor. Tosca moved to the side for maneuvering room. He coughed once and a bloody spray flecked the toilet tank with small red droplets. He grabbed Warren’s handcuffs with one hand and put the other around his throat and squeezed. They struggled silently for a few seconds. Tosca tried to knee him in the groin but missed. Warren jerked his hands free and thrust at Tosca, slicing his fingers. Tosca punched him in the face and his vision went white for a moment but he used his body to pin Tosca to the wall in the small space between the sink and the toilet. In the struggle, Tosca coughed again, spraying Warren’s face with blood. He yelled, “Heller!” but it was more of a rasp. He held Warren’s wrists with both his hands, trying to keep the knife away. Warren wrenched his hands free and swung the blade point first at him, piercing his diaphragm. Warren felt Tosca’s grip go slack. He swung the knife again. Tosca had begun to slump and the knife plunged into his upper chest just below the throat. Warren eased him to the floor. He lay on his face, blood flowing out across the tile. Bobby appeared in the doorway with what looked like a pair of bolt cutters and gaped at Warren. Neither of them spoke. Bobby shifted the cutters from one hand to the other. He looked over his shoulder. “Don’t yell,” Warren said. “Don’t make a sound. I’m not going to hurt you. Just undo these handcuffs.”

  The boy swallowed. He looked past Warren at the body of Steve Tosca, whose face looked flattened against the bloody tile.

  “It’s not too late to get out of this, son. Do what I tell you. Unlock the handcuffs.”

  With trembling hands, Bobby Nevins detached the key chain from Steve Tosca’s belt loop. Warren stood over him, the knife still in his hands. Bobby sorted through the keys until he found the right one. He looked at Warren as if he was having second thoughts. “Don’t try anything,” Warren said. “Because I am madder than hell right now.”

  Bobby unlocked the handcuffs. Warren was aware of blood running down his front. “Did he have a handgun?”

  Bobby didn’t answer.

  “Come on. Answer me.”

  “He usually has one. I don’t know where it is.”

  “Stand right there. Stay quiet.” Warren went out into the living area and looked around. Then he checked the kitchen. There was a pile of oilcloth on the floor and on the counter a .38. He opened the cylinder and checked it. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Warren retreated back into the living area, out of sight. Heller came in and Warren stepped into view. He watched the policeman register the sight before him. Heller’s eyes moved rapidly—for a fraction of a second they were everywhere at once. There was almost a smile on his face but it was not a smile. It was some kind of slight distortion, his thoroughly private reaction to the massively bloodied Warren standing before him pointing a pistol.

  Heller forced out a dismissive sound. “Put it away. You’re not even capable.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Steve!”

  “Steve can’t help you now.”

  “Put that gun down, Warren.”

  “Give me your car keys.”

  “No. Put that thing down, Warren.”

  Heller reached around for his weapon.

  �
�Don’t, Heller.”

  “What are you going to do? Shoot me?”

  Heller, in a confident, relaxed fashion, began unholstering his pistol. Warren shot him once in the groin, the noise incredible in the small apartment. In his peripheral vision, he saw Bobby practically squat in response to the sound. Heller fell on the floor. He got up on one elbow, his eyes closed. “Goddamn you. Goddamn you.” He still held his gun. Warren pointed the revolver at Heller’s chest. “Slide the gun over here.” Heller checked his wound. Blood was pooling on the floor around his left leg and buttock. Warren closed one eye and sighted. “It doesn’t make any difference to me whether you walk out of here or not, Heller. I’ll kill you like it was nothing.”

  Heller tossed the gun toward him. His head lolled back and he looked at the ceiling.

  Warren took the weapon and went through the pockets of Heller’s jacket until he found the keys to his cruiser. Heller began writhing, the shock beginning to wear off and the pain starting. “Come on!” he shouted. “Finish it! Let’s see what you’re made of, Warren.”

  “That would be doing you a favor. I want to be there when you have to answer for what you are.”

  Warren opened the door and stepped out, looking back toward Bobby Nevins and nodding once.

  49

  With the radio turned up nearly full volume at the Sea Mist, the agents listened to the Barnstable police net. An officer at the Kismet had called in the license numbers and descriptions of a ’53 Cadillac and a ’57 Pontiac at the scene. Baldesaro pointed to one of his agents and said, “Get the list.” They searched the list they kept of cars and plate numbers associated with the Elbow Room. One of the agents said, “The Cadillac belongs to George McCarthy. The Pontiac is unknown.”