He waved a finger at me. “Whoa. Alvin Harrison overdosed. That was all him. I found him after he’d already stopped breathing. I was in the apartment when you showed up, pressed up against the wall in the hallway. If you’d only looked to your right, you would have seen me. I don’t know if you got lucky or I did. It doesn’t matter now.”
“I’d say your luck has run out.” The sirens were getting louder by the second. “You wanted to know how I knew you were lying. I didn’t know for sure, not really, until I came back from the restroom and found the drugs were missing.”
“So if I’d just stayed put…”
“You might have gotten away with it. But here we are.”
I heard a familiar thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump. Like a racing heartbeat. No, it was my heartbeat. But there was something else, too…not a sound, but a feeling. A violent rumble shaking the ground. It was as if a great chasm were about to open beneath us and swallow us whole.
“If you turn me in, hundreds of criminals are going to go free,” Dan said. “Everyone I’ve ever arrested—they’ll all walk. I’ve arrested some bad, bad men. You think the streets are dangerous now, wait ‘til you see this town in six months. It’ll be on fire. Do you really want to be responsible for that?” He shook his head slowly. “Step aside, Joe.”
Dan smiled. He was right, and he knew it. Convictions would be overturned if they depended on his testimony. Not every one of his arrests, but enough.
Not enough to make me rethink turning him in, however.
I slapped the big red button on the wall.
The exit door behind Dan hissed open. He spun around.
I hit the button again, but the door was stuck.
Dan wasted no time. He slipped through the door and jumped off the train. His boots landed hard on the rocks, but he didn’t lose his balance. The rumble was growing louder.
Dan jogged a couple steps, then paused on the other set of tracks. At first I thought maybe he’d twisted an ankle or jammed a knee when he leapt out. But no. He turned around to face me. His lips twisted into a wry smile. He put his index and middle fingers up to his eyebrow and bid me adieu with a good ol’ fashioned two-finger salute. I was contemplating whether to return the gesture or shoot him a one-fingered salutation when he was hit by a screeching train.
50
The first vehicle to arrive on the scene wasn’t a police car or an ambulance.
It was an Escalade.
The Little Beast plowed through the six-foot chain-link fence and skidded to a stop inches from the open door of the train, where I was sitting. The interior sliding doors on either side of the vestibule were locked. I’d peeked through one of the windows, hoping to converse with the conductor or the café attendant. Employees and passengers were bent over in their seats, heads between their knees, hands covering the backs of their necks. Waiting for the all-clear from law enforcement.
Steve hopped out of the driver’s side door. He left the SUV idling. “Is Dan—”
“Neutralized,” I said, nodding over my shoulder. “Hit by another train.” The Acela that hit Dan had finally come to a rest farther down the tracks. I didn’t know where it threw his body, and I didn’t care. The cadaver dogs would be around soon enough to start the search for what was left of him.
“Help is on the way,” Steve said, examining the bulge on my temple. He looked like he needed help more than I did. He had a shoulder sling on his left arm and was still wearing his hospital bracelet.
“Barack got my message,” I said. A slight breeze blew through the vestibule.
Steve moved a finger back and forth in front of my face. I followed it with my eyes. “You didn’t leave a message, so the president didn’t think anything of it, really. In the meantime, though, I contacted the DEA to straighten some things out. They told us they were investigating Detective Capriotti. That, of course, raised some red flags, and when we couldn’t reach you, well…”
“How’d you find me?”
“Traced your phone, of course.”
“That takes a court order, doesn’t it? You can’t do it in real time.”
“If you’re suggesting President Obama has some sort of backdoor into the officially dismantled NSA surveillance program—”
“Say no more,” I said. They’d had the train stopped. That was what mattered. If it hadn’t been for them, Dan could have slipped away when the conductor opened the cabin doors at Wilmington Station.
“There’s a man,” I said. “Jeremy. A Drug Enforcement agent, undercover. He was the biker we chased yesterday. Dan threw him off the train a couple of hundred yards back.”
“There’s a medical helicopter on the way,” Steve said. “We’ll have them look for him.”
Barack stepped out of the SUV. He was wearing the Phillies cap again.
“What did we miss?” he asked. “Did you and Dan fight it out on the top of the train?”
I climbed down onto the rocks and pointed to the electrical cables running over the tracks. “Touch one of those, and you’ll be fried to the tune of twenty-five thousand volts.”
“Guess they don’t call you Amtrak Joe for nothing.”
“I know some things,” I admitted.
A trio of cop cars pulled into the gravel parking lot on the other side of the fence, lights flashing. They killed their sirens. A police helicopter circled overhead.
“They’re not going to give us a hard time, are they?” I asked.
“Lieutenant Esposito’s in charge,” Steve said. “So maybe.”
Barack ran his hands over the Escalade’s bumper. The Little Beast had sustained minor damage in the weekend’s festivities. There was a scratch or two on the hood. A minor dent on the front side panel if you looked at it in the right light. Other than that, it could have been fresh off the lot. “We’ll run through a car wash on the way home,” Barack announced to no one in particular.
Steve answered his phone. He waved up to the helicopter, letting someone—Esposito?—on the other end of the line know that they could call off the SWAT team.
There was a loud clank behind me. I turned in time to see a bloodied, mangled figure entering the train vestibule through the far door that was stuck open. There was nothing human about the creature except for the whites of its eyes.
It was Dan.
He’d been torn to shreds.
Somehow, despite it all, he’d found a way to gather his broken limbs into something resembling a human form. His breathing was shallow, ragged. In his right hand he held a snub-nosed pistol, which he must have hidden in a holster.
I realized he could have pulled it out and shot me during our standoff, but he hadn’t. Perhaps he’d had second thoughts about killing me. Perhaps he’d simply known it was futile. Now, however, he was past rational thought. He was fueled by rage. A thirst for revenge.
“Gun!” I yelled. I launched myself shoulder-first into Barack, knocking him to the ground and out of harm’s way. Steve dropped his phone and pulled out his own piece.
The smell of gunpowder was in the air. Shots had been fired. I hadn’t even heard them. All I could hear was the ringing in my ears. I was lying on top of Barack and rolled off onto the rocks. Steve was racing for us, gripping his smoking SIG Sauer with his one good hand. The shootout was over.
Dan was finally dead.
Barack and Steve helped me up into a sitting position. Barack showed no signs of injury. It took a lot more than an old man to knock the wind out of him.
I grabbed my aching love handle, and my index finger went through a tiny hole in my bomber jacket. A bullet hole. I’d been hit.
Barack threw open my jacket and patted me down. There was no blood, no entry or exit wound on the pink skin of my abdomen. “It went through your jacket but missed your body,” he said, his voice muffled. My hearing was slowly coming back. “You’re lucky to be ali
ve.”
“It wasn’t luck,” I said.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the bullet. Its nose was bent at an angle. I tossed it into the sand. There was a small dent almost dead-center in the Medal of Freedom, with cracks in the enamel overlay radiating around it. The dent would need to be pounded out, and the paint would need touching up. I knew my auto-body guy would fix it for a pittance, especially compared to what a jeweler might charge. All in all, the medal wasn’t in bad shape.
And, all things considered, neither was I.
51
Steve and I gave statements to the Wilmington PD. Steve’s hands were trembling; he’d never shot someone before. My hands weren’t the steadiest, either—I’d never been shot before. Neither of us mentioned the president playing games on his BlackBerry.
Dan wouldn’t be mentioning him, either. The fact that Dan had died instead of entering the Delaware penal system was probably for the best. The Marauders would have surely put a hit out on him once they found out what he’d done to Taylor.
Esposito approached me after I’d finished giving my statement. “I should apologize for being so hard on you,” she said.
“You should, but…”
“But I don’t believe in apologies.”
I shook her hand. “I appreciate the gesture nonetheless.”
She promised a full internal investigation into Detective Capriotti’s illicit activities. I didn’t blame her or her department. I believed that the Wilmington police force did the best they could with the tools they were given. Police officers were, by and large, good people. A single bad egg, however, was all it took to spoil the bunch. At least as far as public perception is concerned. It would be up to Esposito to clean up the mess.
A pair of DEA officers—one man, one woman—introduced themselves to me. I recognized their names from the search warrant for the Donnellys’ home. “Do you have a moment to chat?” the female agent said.
An EMT was wrapping a blood pressure cuff around my upper arm. “As long as you don’t say anything to spike my numbers,” I said.
They explained to me that the Marauders’ trafficking encompassed the entire eastern seaboard. The scheme involving Finn Donnelly had been just one piece of a larger pie they were tracking. I apologized for royally screwing their investigation, but they told me not to sweat it. When they realized Dan Capriotti was crooked, the entire DEA operation had been thrown into disarray. The DEA couldn’t trust Esposito or anyone else in the Wilmington PD. They didn’t know how far the conspiracy to “tax” the Marauders’ local chapter went, or if Finn Donnelly had truly gone into business for himself. For a while, everyone who crossed their radar had been suspect.
“Including me,” I said.
The agents looked at each other, but didn’t deny the charge. “We had an undercover operative and an informant to protect,” the female agent said. “We couldn’t trust anyone.”
“Jeremy was the undercover operative. Who was the informant?”
“Alvin Harrison,” she said. He was dead now and the operation had fizzled out, so there was no risk in revealing his name. “He’d turned in a tip that Finn was smuggling something.”
“So rather than confront Finn directly…”
The male agent cleared his throat. “There was a reward involved. A substantial reward.”
It couldn’t have been easy for Alvin to turn in one of his railroad brothers. I wanted to believe Alvin had been motivated by more than money. A sense of justice, perhaps. I assumed that Alvin had his reasons for doing what he did, just as Finn had his reasons for doing what he did. Whatever the reasoning behind Alvin’s actions, I now understood the pit of despair he’d fallen into after the accident. Even though Finn was already dead when Alvin’s train hit him, Alvin had killed him, in a way. And he’d known it. The weight had been too much to bear.
Even though the good guys ultimately prevailed, the bad guys had landed some hard punches. Dan’s betrayal stung. We were entering a new age, one where there were no absolutes like right and wrong. The worst part was that it felt like everyone else had already been living there for a long time. I was finally just catching on.
52
We retired to the Lake House for the evening, and Jill cooked us a big Sunday dinner. She had a million questions, but she was willing to wait and let me rest before hearing the full story. I promised not to leave anything out. Not this time. Not ever again.
After dinner, Barack and I took seats on opposite sides of the couch in the living room. Champ was chasing fireflies in the yard. So was Steve. They’d shared a package of hot dogs at dinner, and now they were the best of friends.
“You want to do this again?” I asked Barack.
“Have dinner? Sure, why not?”
“I meant the whole private investigator thing. You can get a license for cheap in Delaware. Cheaper than a crab-fishing license.”
“Joe, don’t take this the wrong way, but we would make terrible private investigators. Plus, we’ve got a lot on our plates already. You’ve got your university work and your foundations. I’ve got some books to write.”
“I was kidding.”
“It’s hard to tell sometimes, Joe.”
I sighed. “It’s not like I’d have the time, anyway. I’ve been thinking about running.”
“Really.”
“I’m no spring chicken, but I’m not dead yet. It’s like my mother used to say, ‘You’re not dead until you see the face of God at the Pearly Gates.’”
“You’d be the oldest guy to ever run for president.”
“President?” I said with a laugh. “I’m talking about running. Like maybe a 5K. As soon as I bounce back from this bum knee.”
Barack shook his head. Jill was doing the dishes in the kitchen. She only did the dishes when she was ticked off at me—otherwise, that particular task fell under my purview.
“Besides the knee, I’m in better shape than any other old guy you know—you have to admit that,” I said. “And that’s just from being a Biden. Imagine what kind of shape I’d be in if I actually started working out.”
“If you actually want to run—for office, that is…”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
I wasn’t just saying it to say it. I meant it. Barack was an honorary Biden. Through good times and bad. Through the ups and the downs. This was definitely one of those down times, but, God willing, it wouldn’t last forever. Nothing does. Not even grief. The first year after you’ve lost someone is the most painful, but the second year is excruciating in its own way. The grief fades, and it’s only on birthdays, and anniversaries, and holidays that you realize you’ve become accustomed to their absence. That you don’t think about them every day.
I picked up a deck of cards on the coffee table and shuffled them. “Rummy?”
Barack nodded.
For a long while, neither of us said another word. We just played cards. Jill started the dishwasher and went upstairs to call the grandkids. It was something we did together, at the same time every Sunday night. Not this week, though.
Barack drew from the discard pile. “Do you know why I came to see you last week?”
“To tell me about Finn.”
He nodded. “I could have called, though.”
“You could have.”
“But I didn’t. Michelle was the one who told me to drive up here on Wednesday. I’m usually as cool as cucumber lotion, but I asked Steve to pick me up a pack of smokes on the way.” He paused. “That was the first cigarette I’d had in seven years.”
“I don’t know why you were so nervous. It’s just me—Uncle Joe.”
“I thought you’d be mad.”
“I was.”
“You were?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
“Did you think I was happy as a clam, sitting at home watching you go kite
-surfing and Formula One racing and who knows what else with guys half my age?”
“I never went Formula One—no, wait, I did. But I don’t see why you were mad. You’ve never liked extreme sports.”
“I wasn’t mad,” I said, discarding a ten of clubs. “I was jealous of your never-ending parade of celebrity playmates. As soon as we parted ways, you started holding open auditions for a new best friend.”
He took a Nicorette from his pocket. It was his third package this weekend. “I was trying to keep my distance. I told you this.”
“How was I supposed to know at the time? We’re brothers, not twins. We don’t have a psychic connection.”
“I don’t think that’s how twins really work.”
“That’s not what Jenna Bush Hager told me,” I said. “Bipartisanship. Try it sometime and you might learn something new.”
Barack played a meld. The six, seven, and eight of hearts. He discarded his final card.
Game. Set. Match.
“Are we keeping track of score?” I asked, tossing my cards faceup onto the table.
“You’re only asking because I won, aren’t you?”
I grinned. Barack was the most competitive person I’d ever known. It drove him up a wall when somebody suggested playing a game “just for fun.” If there wasn’t a clear winner and loser, he tended to lose interest. He lived for elections. He withered in office.
I handed him the deck. “You shuffle this time.”
“The most important people in my life have always been women,” Barack said, dealing the cards. “My grandmother. My mother. Michelle. My daughters. Not saying I haven’t had male friends, because I have guys I play ball with. Guys I have beers with. But with you, it’s different. Once we figured each other out, it was like our friendship was on autopilot. It was so easy, for so long, that once we left office, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to just text another guy without inviting him over to shoot hoops. I didn’t know how to call you just to talk, even though that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t know, and I’m sorry, Joe.”
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