by Denis Hamill
“Dorothea, I’m here,” Bobby shouted, drowning out the sound of the reloading. “It’s Bobby. I’m here, Dorothea . . .”
“You’re not Bobby,” Dorothea said in her faint singsongy voice. “Bobby is dead. You leave my daddy alone . . .”
And then Dorothea stood, frail and disturbed, and sauntered through the room, bumping into furniture, falling to one knee, getting back up, desperately reaching for the walls, as if searching for something.
“Get down, Dorothea,” Shine screamed.
“Dorothea it is me, Bobby,” he shouted, and rose to a half crouch to try to get to her. Dorothea looked at him, her eyes blinking, as if trying to decide if she were dreaming or awake. Shine fired at Bobby, but the bullet whizzed by him, shattering a vase filled with flowers. Bobby fell flat to the floor.
“Bobby?” Dorothea said, the amphetamine making her progressively more lucid. “Daddy? Is that really Bobby, Daddy?”
“No, Dorothea, he’s lying,” Shine shouted.
“I’m not lying, Dorothea,” Bobby said softly. “ ‘Ya tebe kohayu.’ St. Peter’s Church. The red light on the top of the Empire State Building.”
“He’s telling you the truth, lady,” Morgan shouted. “He don’t do that often, but he is now. He is Bobby Emmet . . .”
“Bobby,” Dorothea whispered. Then Bobby heard her sigh softly, like a lost kitten’s sad lament.
“Get down, Dorothea,” Bobby shouted, as he searched the room for John Shine. Dorothea continued to grope at the walls, knocking down a calendar and a wall clock.
“Bobby . . .” she said.
And then Dorothea found what she’d been looking for—the light switch! She swiped it in a downward motion, and suddenly the room went completely dark. A darkness as total as Bobby’d ever known.
John Shine began to laugh as Bobby tried to adjust to the menacing blackness.
“She’s been in the dark for a year and a half,” Shine said, moving confidently in the accustomed gloom. “She doesn’t even know who she is, never mind who you are. Only I know who she really is.”
Bobby could tell that Shine was still moving in the dark, arrogantly familiar with the layout. There were no windows, so not even a dull glow found its way into the sunken dungeon.
“I know more than you think I know, John,” Bobby said, eager to keep Shine talking until he could track the sound of his voice to get his hands on him.
“Like what for instance?” Shine said, his voice coming at Bobby from his left side now. “What do you think you know?”
“I know you ran the whole three-quarters pension operation,” Bobby said. “That you ordered Tom Larkin killed because he figured out you had an architect named Barbara Lacy murdered in my apartment and then had her cremated and made to look like it was Dorothea. Then you had Sandy Fraser killed because she was finally going to tell me her child’s father was really Gerald Stone . . .”
“I wish the fuck you woulda told me this shit,” Morgan shouted from the gloom.
“Sandy . . .” Dorothea said from the darkness. “Daddy, did you really hurt Sandy?”
“He had her killed, Dorothea,” Bobby said.
“You’re good, Bobby,” Shine said, and this time his voice came from yet another part of the room. “But then again, I taught you.”
Bobby could not get his bearings. He could hear Dr. Perez saying prayers in Spanish in the dark and Forrest Morgan moaning in pain.
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere, Shine,” Morgan shouted. “So give this crazy-assed shit up, man.”
“Oh, be quiet, you insignificant dust mite,” Shine said. “Can’t you see there is a serious tête-à-tête going on here between teacher and student? Show some respect.”
“Fuck you, psycho,” Morgan shouted.
“I also know you were never married, John,” Bobby said. “That there was never any boating accident.”
This brought a long silence from the pitch dark.
“But I know about the woman,” Bobby said. “The diplomat’s wife. Slomowicz’s wife. Whose maiden name was ‘Dubrow.’ ”
“That is quite enough,” Shine said, his voice suddenly sharp with anger.
“And that she was recalled back to the Ukraine after they discovered the affair she had with you,” Bobby said. “But she was pregnant, with your child. With Dorothea.”
“Enough!” Shine angrily boomed, his voice closer now.
“Then after the Iron Curtain fell, you searched for them, didn’t you?” Bobby said, listening to Shine shuffle in the dark. “Moira Farrell helped you get a visa. You even traveled to the Ukraine. Came up empty . . .”
“You have no idea how much pain, the fucking heartache I lived with all those years,” Shine said softly, almost as if hoping for understanding.
“Then one day a couple of years ago little Dorothea showed up at your doorstep, as a beautiful grown-up woman,” Bobby said, searching for a reply in the dense murk. “Like a war baby. A Cold War baby. She looked you up because her outcast mother had always told her about her real father in America. A mother who died after years of being disgraced and ostracized back home. Dorothea told me how her mother had lived a terrible, lonely life. That she lived only to educate Dorothea, to pass on all that she knew to her daughter, who might someday have a life. She never told me why there was no father. Now I know why. Her mother was considered a cheap, cheating, traitorous wife who had embarrassed her diplomat husband and her country by having a baby by some lowbred American cop.”
“You make it sound so tawdry,” Shine said, and Bobby could hear him moving a chair in front of him in the dark. “But I loved that woman all my life. Loved my daughter I never knew . . .”
“Then Dorothea came in search of her father in America and found a crackpot,” Bobby said. “A man incapable of having another woman or another child and who chose instead to exploit everyone in power until he had the power himself.”
“How come you never told me none of this shit, Bobby, man,” Forrest Morgan shouted. “I would have brought me a net and six-pack of shrinks.”
“It would have been so perfect,” Shine said, reflectively. “But you had to come sniffing around. I only asked Dorothea to amuse you, have dinner with you, to find out what you knew about me and her. To play along with this joke on my friend and keep it a secret that she was my daughter. At least until I learned what you knew about the business I was involved in. And then, the silly girl—just like her lovely, silly mother—she fell in love with a New York cop. I pleaded with her. Begged her to drop you. But she said she was going to marry you. I couldn’t let that happen now, could I? I couldn’t let my Dorothea be taken away from me again. The only way to get her away from you, and you away from me and my little operation, was to arrange for both of you to disappear.”
“You call twenty million dollars a little operation?” Bobby said.
“That was only this year’s take, Bobby, baby,” Shine said with a proud laugh. “The Stone campaign has already spent twenty from last year’s take . . .”
“I’ll be double goddamned,” Morgan said from the darkness.
“Not much to own a New York governor, huh?” Shine said, still chuckling. “Mr. Emerson, who coined the phrase ‘man in the street,’ advised people like us to ‘hitch your wagon to a star,’ Bobby. I did.”
“And in case Stone tries to renege on his promises, you arranged for another ace in the hole,” Bobby said. “A card from your own deck, when you used Barnicle and Moira Farrell to set up Sandy Fraser with Gerald Stone, Mr. Family Values. Talked her into having horny Stone’s baby so you could blackmail him for as long as he held office.”
“Sandy was an attractive woman who wasn’t getting any younger,” Shine said. “She wanted a child. She found Stone attractive. She was more than willing to use him. He was willing to use her for his own pleasure, the hypocritical prick. So why shouldn’t I use two users? I would know how to control a man like that. Tell him what laws to sign, which ones to veto, who to pardon, wh
o to hire and fire. What programs to fund, which ones to cancel . . . even when to run for president.”
“You are one outta-space motherfucker,” Forrest Morgan said. “What the fuck kind of drugs you on?”
“Just like you blackmailed the doctors on the pension boards with videotapes of murdered hookers,” Bobby said, gripping his pistol. “You were going to use Sandy’s kid as blackmail against a family-values politician. Problem was, Sandy wound up loving the kid more than the greedy plan. She wanted out. You wouldn’t allow that.”
Bobby felt a cold circle of steel on the back of his skull as Shine knelt over him with the gun. Shine removed Bobby’s gun from his hand and slid it across the floor.
“Couldn’t,” Shine said softly, and then sighed. “Just like I couldn’t let Dorothea continue with you, Bobby. I couldn’t lose her again. So I kept Dorothea here with me. Safe. From you and all the others. Helping her forget . . .”
“Like Kate Clementine’s uncle,” Bobby said.
“I understood him,” Shine said. “Yes, I could relate to how much he loved his niece; that he wanted to protect her from this fucked-up world.”
“You loved Dorothea so much that you had Sandy killed; Dorothea’s only friend,” Bobby said.
“Daddy, did you have Sandy killed?” Dorothea demanded, her voice stronger now.
“And now it’s a shame you got in my way, Bobby. I never wanted to have to kill you myself. I tried to have you taken care of a half-dozen times. But in the end, you really must rely on yourself. You were a dear friend and a more than worthy enemy. But look what being an honest cop got you. Jail. Now, like your father, death. Emerson said, ‘Good men must not obey the laws too well.’ Now, Bobby, it’s over. I gotta go.”
He heard Shine’s gun cock.
“Daddy, did you kill Sandy?” Dorothea said.
“Get down, Dorothea,” Shine said. “We’ll be leaving soon.”
“You know what my favorite Emerson quote is, John?” Bobby said, trying anything to keep Shine talking.
“No,” Shine said eagerly. “Which one?”
“He said, ‘I hate quotations.’ ”
Suddenly Dorothea switched on the lights and screamed, “Bobby! Daddy!”
In the blinding glare, Bobby swung a wild hand at a stunned John Shine, knocking his gun out of his hand. Bobby smacked him hard enough to tumble him to the floor. Morgan trained his gun in Shine’s direction and fired. Empty. “Motherfucker!” Morgan shouted and hurled the gun at Shine, hitting him in the chest. Shine groaned, and Bobby lunged at his shadowy form. Shine hit Bobby with a crunching right hand to the temple that made Bobby see a burst of tiny dancing sparkles. Bobby threw a left hook into the bottom of Shine’s spinal column, making him wail with anguish. But, ever in terrible pain, Shine kept scrambling for his pistol. Bobby rolled across the floor toward his own gun.
Shine reached his gun first.
He swung, took dead aim at Bobby Emmet, and squeezed the trigger as Dorothea Dubrow lurched from the light switch by the wall, in between the two men.
“No, Daddy!” Dorothea shouted.
“No!” Bobby shouted. “Dorothea, No!”
John Shine fired.
“Bobby,” she whispered.
Dorothea Dubrow absorbed the bullet intended for Bobby Emmet. The impact sent her sprawling across Bobby’s lap. Perez, from his prone position, kicked Bobby’s gun toward him. Bobby snatched it up. The bullet that Dorothea had just taken had left Bobby emotionally numb. Bobby fired past the dying Dorothea with a reflexive, mechanical response. His bullet entered Shine’s forehead like a rivet. Shine remained in a seated position for three more suspended seconds, his astonished eyes at first refusing to accept the death that had already arrived. Then he slowly collapsed to the floor.
Dorothea Dubrow lay on Bobby Emmet’s legs, heavier than the weight of the rest of the world, her chest torn cruelly open, her eyes forever closed.
56
TUESDAY
In the predawn on election day, Gerald Stone came alone to meet Bobby Emmet on the empty beach at Prince’s Bay in Staten Island.
Bobby had called the gubernatorial candidate’s private number during the night and told an aide that Stone had better come meet him that morning. He gave him the time and place on the deserted beach near Wolfe’s Pond Park.
“The councilman is much too busy to meet with anyone on election day morning,” the aide said.
“Tell him it’s about little Donald,” Bobby said. “He’ll understand. If he doesn’t see me about the kid, tell him to watch with his wife, his kids, and the rest of the state on the morning news.”
The aide had obviously passed on the message because at five AM sharp a blue Chevy Blazer pulled alongside Bobby’s Jeep in the parking lot near the sea. Bobby watched the gulls wheel on an awakening sky as the waves rolled in like installments of a very deep and endless sadness. Bobby was weak, stained with the mental images of Dorothea’s death. He had been grilled by cops for two hours, and finally Izzy Gleason told them to arrest him or cut him loose.
They let him go with a promise to the state attorney general’s office that he would testify about the whole three-quarters operation and all the deaths that surrounded it. The cops that Patrick had neutralized in The Central Booking Saloon were arrested by Internal Affairs, the collars credited to Forrest Morgan.
Morgan had arranged for Sandy Fraser’s aunt in New Jersey to get custody of Sandy’s son. While in the nanny’s house, Bobby retrieved a photograph of Sandy holding Donald.
Bobby unfolded an early four-star edition of the morning’s Daily News. The text of Max Roth’s column, along with his photo logo and an EXCLUSIVE banner, began on page one, a tabloid editorial decision made only when the paper has something truly big. The main front-page headline screamed out at the city: COP SHOCK!
Roth’s column carried a subhead: Emmet Walks as Rogue Cops Talk.
In the end, Bobby Emmet did what he always did best—he busted a bunch of bad guys. This time the bad guys were dressed in blue with shiny badges, badges they abused to frame Emmet for the murder of the woman he loved.
A murder he never committed.
The woman, Dorothea Dubrow, didn’t even die until last night, as Emmet, accompanied by Internal Affairs detective Forrest Morgan, closed in on her abductors in the subcellar of a Windy Tip beach house owned by a deranged, disgruntled, delusional ex-cop named John Shine. Shine was the secret mastermind behind a rogue cop pension racket that is now being called the Three-Quarters Crew.
In searching for Dubrow, to clear his sullied name, Bobby Emmet has cracked open the biggest police corruption scandal of the decade.
Emmet has untangled a web of political conspiracy, murder, revenge, greed, kidnapping, blackmail, municipal looting, and outrageous abuse of power. This morning, corrupt politicians are cowering in their miserable back rooms, waiting for the indictments to fall like trapdoors on the gallows.
All over town, all day long, greedy defense lawyers will be rubbing their hands together in glee as dirty cops race to cop pleas faster than DAs can impanel grand juries. Last night the “Three-Quarters Crew” cops were diming on each other like terrified school kids, each desperate to save his miserable behind from the life of an excop in the joint. A life that almost killed Bobby Emmet a half-dozen times in 18 months of what he calls “cop in the can.”
But today Bobby Emmet walks as a free man, today Bobby Emmet goes home to his kid with his head held high and . . .
Bobby knew the rest of the story, especially the part about Dorothea and Sandy. He folded the paper and now held the photograph of Sandy and Donald in his hand as he watched a nervous-looking Gerald Stone, dressed in jeans and windbreaker, walk across the sand to the picnic table where Bobby sat facing the sea.
“The news is already starting to break,” Stone said quietly, looking out at the foaming waves. “It’s all so awful. Every paper and news station in town wants a statement.”
Bobby placed the photo
graph of little Donald on the table and stared silently at Gerald Stone. Bobby’s eyes were tired and raw, glittering with a barely controlled anger. Stone looked from Bobby down at the picture of a smiling Donald in the arms of a proud and beaming Sandy Fraser. Stone nodded as if he were identifying a perp in a mug-shot book.
“I knew he was my kid,” Stone said. “But try to understand. I was afraid if I acknowledged him, I’d lose all my other kids. My wife. My career . . .”
Bobby picked up the photograph and put it in his own shirt pocket.
“You don’t have a career anymore,” Bobby said.
“Please, I had no idea about all the things they did,” Stone pleaded. “To you. Your girlfriend. To Sandy. I was a victim, too. Me, I’ve been used, too . . . .”
Bobby got up and looked Gerald Stone in the eyes, the wind off the ocean twirling Stone’s hair. Bobby was surprised that he had no desire to kill him. If this was maturity, he didn’t like it.
“I’ll support the kid: money, schools, medical, college, everything,” Stone said, desperately. “What do you want from me? What? Tell me what you want.”
“It’s over,” Bobby said, and walked to his Jeep, leaving Stone alone on the shore.
On the morning news, gubernatorial candidate Gerald Stone stunned the media when he called a hasty press conference and announced he was withdrawing from the Republican primary for personal reasons and family considerations. Even if he was nominated, he would not accept.
EPILOGUE
Because Maggie had completed so much extra school credit over the summer, Connie relented and let her take the whole week after Thanksgiving off from school. This gave Bobby, Maggie, and Patrick eleven full days to take The Fifth Amendment down to Miami to visit Grandma.
Patrick was celebrating his promotion to the rank of detective, third grade, assigned to Brooklyn PMD, Public Morals Division, for his participation in busting open the three-quarters pension scam.
Izzy Gleason had just left the boat, after dropping off Bobby’s pistol carry permit and his private investigator’s license. “Bobby Emmet, P.I.,” Gleason had said before leaving to make arrangements to see his own kids for Thanksgiving.