by Andrew Gross
“I didn’t shoot anyone. I swear.”
“Then help us see that, Victor. We can square this up, just like that. ’Cause that was a federal attorney killed there today. Someone very important, Victor, and the lieutenant and I…we’re all there is from turning your ass over to the FBI and making this a federal crime. And that means the death penalty, Victor. You’re seventeen. Once that happens”—Munoz shrugged—“nothing we can do.”
Victor rubbed his hands across his face.
Munoz glanced at Hauck. “Look, we know you didn’t mean to hurt that person, Victor. We know it was just an accident, that you were just trying to settle some scores about your sister. Anyone who calls himself a man might do that. And it just got out of control. That’s manslaughter, Victor. That’s something entirely different. That’s something we can work with, if that’s what you want. So I’m gonna ask you one more time and you’re gonna tell us, Victor, if you have any sense left in that head of yours—where were you this morning?”
“I didn’t shoot anyone!” Victor said again. He stood up. His cap fell off his head. He brushed his wiry hair back with two hands and leaned against the wall, palms flat, shaking his head. Tears glistened in his eyes.
Hauck stepped over to him. He placed his hand on the frightened teenager’s shoulder. “Victor, listen to me. You’re not being smart today, son. And I know you’re smart. I know you’re in school and that you do well and I promised your mother I’d watch out for you here, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I swear.
“But Detective Munoz here is right…There’s gonna be a witch hunt for whoever killed that man, Victor, and right now we’re the only thing in between you and being handed over to the Feds. And if that happens, son, there’s no one who can watch out for you then. Wherever you were, whatever it is you’re protecting, you have to tell us now, ’cause there ain’t nothing, nothing you could possibly be protecting in this world that’s more important. Your mother’s already been through hell, Victor. You don’t want to put her through all that pain all over again…”
Victor turned around. He was on the edge of sobbing.
Hauck pulled the boy against him. He let the kid cry. When he was done, Victor pulled away, wiped his nose, and took a breath that made his whole body shudder. “I didn’t shoot anyone, I swear. Whatever I may have said back then—that wasn’t me. I tell you where I was, you have to involve anyone else in it? You can keep someone out?”
“We’re trying to solve a murder here, son.” Hauck looked the boy in the face. “Nothing else.”
“Okay…” Victor nodded, drew in a deep breath. “I was with someone. All night. A girl. Her folks were away. She’s only fifteen. Her father finds out, she’s dead as that lawyer at the station you’re talking about…”
Munoz glanced at Hauck. “You can prove this, Victor?”
“Yeah, I can prove it. People saw me. People knew I was there.”
Munoz pushed a pad of paper across the table. “Start writing, hombre.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was after ten when Hauck finally made it home to the two-level renovated cape he rented near Hope Cove in Stamford.
The raucous press conference set up on the station’s front steps had been a mob scene. Reporters shouting about the “person of interest” being held in their cell. Hauck urging them not to jump to any conclusions. Everyone demanding to know if this was indeed some kind of twisted act of revenge.
As Hauck climbed up the outside stairs and put the key in the lock, he realized he was still wearing the same blood-soiled clothes from the shooting twelve hours before.
Tobey, Karen’s Westie, whom he’d been taking care of while she was in Atlanta, scratched at the door when he heard Hauck’s footsteps on the landing. Hauck opened and knelt down as the excited dog jumped against his chest. “Hey, bud…”
It seemed like days ago that he and Jessie were supposed to pick him up before heading onto the boat. But it was only hours. “You must be starved, guy.”
He went into the bedroom, pulled off the soiled fleece pullover, and flung it into the hamper. He took a long look at himself in the mirror.
His short, dark hair was matted from sweat, his clear blue eyes dulled and drawn from the day. Hauck’s body, still fit and athletic at forty-three, ached like it did after he’d been pounded by two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linemen back in college. He was exhausted. The bandaged gash on his neck had begun to throb. He couldn’t remember his last meal.
He trudged back to the kitchen and opened a can of dog food and a Yuengling beer. He clicked on the TV, still standing there bare-chested in his jeans.
“Brazen gunfire erupts in one of the area’s poshest suburbs…,” the newscaster announced, “and a rising young attorney is dead.”
Hauck listened as the pretty reporter recounted the details of the drive-by shooting, set up in front of the darkened, blocked-off Exxon station on Putnam. She went through the details of how David Sanger was killed, the suspicion that he had stepped into a hail of gunfire intended for someone else. “A tragic act of revenge gone wrong,” she called it. He saw a shot of himself on the screen, a quick sound bite of him trying to urge calm and not sounding very effective.
His cell phone rang.
Hauck reached for it, pleased to see Karen’s name on the caller ID.
“So, how the hell was your day?” He exhaled, throwing himself on the couch in front of the TV.
“Ty…” Karen exclaimed. “I just heard. I can’t believe what I just saw on the news down here…”
“See what happens,” he sniffed, “when you bail out on me.”
“Ty, don’t joke about this, please. I just saw you being interviewed. You were there?”
“Jess and I were getting ready to take the boat out one last time. We were waiting in line to pay.”
“Jessie was with you?”
“Don’t worry, Karen, she’s okay. They took her to Greenwich Hospital, just for precautions. She’s back in Brooklyn with Beth now.”
“My God, Ty, that must have been awful! What about you? Are you okay?”
For a moment he thought about telling her. His horror as he turned at the register and saw the red pickup’s window roll down. The feeling of hugging his daughter with everything he had, flashes of orange death all around. Seeing her body lying there, covered with blood.
Instead, he just took in a breath and shut his eyes. “Yeah, I’m doing okay, Karen.”
“I saw that someone was killed,” Karen said. “A lawyer.”
“Not just a lawyer, a United States attorney. Based in Hartford. He lived here in town. We were all just sort of standing at the cooler a minute before picking out drinks.”
“They’re saying revenge?”
“Not on him. Just the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Oh, God, that’s so horrible, Ty.”
“Yeah. The guy’s cell phone started to ring. The body’s just lying there on the floor, eyes wide, whatever he’d been carrying, cans of soda, off to the side…And his phone starts chiming. His wife calling in. It goes into his voice mail. What the hell do you do then, Karen?”
“I don’t know, Ty. I don’t know what you do.”
Hauck paused, lowering the volume on the TV. “You just let it ring; what the hell else is there? You just stand there and suddenly you realize—she’s just wondering where he is, why’s he taking so long. He just went to fill up the fucking car. Like any day…Except her whole world is about to implode on the other end of that line. It’s already imploded—she just doesn’t know it yet.”
“I do know what that feels like, Ty. Having someone walk out the door and never come back.”
“Yeah.” He caught himself. “I know you do, Karen.”
For a moment, they didn’t say anything. Then Karen asked, “Ty, are you alright?”
“Am I alright?” He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “I don’t know if I’m alright. I tried to go after the truck, to get a read on the plates
, and when I looked back around I—” He chugged a swallow of beer, cooling the dryness in his throat. “I saw Jess. Curled on the floor, this little mound, not moving, blood…”
“Blood? Whose blood, Ty?”
“His blood. The guy who was killed. He stood right behind her in line. For a second, I just looked at her and I thought…”
“I know what you thought…”
“I was just so relieved and happy when she came to. That the blood wasn’t hers. That it belonged to someone else. That she was okay. You know what I mean?”
“Of course I know what you mean. It’s alright to feel that way.”
“Yeah.” He let his head drop back. “I know it’s alright.”
Tobey jumped up on the couch. Hauck drew the dog to him, bringing his face up to the phone. “I’ve got your little pooch here. He wants to say hello.”
“Hey there, baby…,” Karen called, her voice both cheery and forlorn. “Mommy misses you.”
“He’s wondering when you’re coming back. I think he needs to shit on his own lawn. He says he’s looking forward to Thanksgiving…”
There was a pause, which Hauck expected would be followed by Yeah, honey, I am too… But instead he heard only a long, stretched-out silence.
Finally, Karen said, “Listen, we’re gonna have to talk about that, Ty…”
“Talk about what?”
“Not now. It can wait. You’ve got other things…”
“We’re gonna have to talk about what, Karen?” He sat up and brought in his legs off the table.
“About Thanksgiving. I was going to tell you, Ty, just not today…” She cleared her throat. “Listen, I’m not going to be coming back up there. At least not for a while.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It hit him like a fist to the solar plexus. Air rushing out of him. The feeling, from out of left field, that his heart had just been kicked.
“I just can’t now,” Karen said. “Do you understand? Mel’s not well. He’s not getting better. I asked the kids to come down here on their school breaks. I was gonna have Samantha bring Tobey down for a while…”
“Jesus, Karen…” Hauck took the phone out of the crook in his neck.
He had felt her pulling away, just a bit. Her dad was in the latter stages of Parkinson’s. And deteriorating. That’s why she had gone back home. To be with him and help her mother through. That and maybe to find out who she was after picking up with Hauck so quickly. But the couple of weeks had turned into a month. Now a month had become…At least not for a while.
“You could come down here,” she said. “I just need to be here right now, Ty. You can understand that. They need me. I was with my husband for twenty years, then when everything happened last year with Charlie, and you…I love you, Ty—you know that. I owe my life to you…” She cleared her throat. “But this is where I need to be, honey, until whatever happens does. Not just for them, but for me, too. Don’t be angry with me. I didn’t know it was going to be this way. I told you from the start there were things I couldn’t promise…”
“I’m not angry, Karen. I’m hoping the best for Mel.”
There was a lull, both of them stumbling over what they could say. Karen ultimately broke the silence. “Well, I guess this caps off one helluva day…”
“Did I mention that I was shot, also?”
“Shot?”
“More like a graze on my neck. I’ve done worse shaving. It does, however, make it onto the list.”
“Jesus, baby,” Karen said, “won’t you stop at anything to get yourself on TV?”
Hauck laughed. Karen did too. There was another pause until she asked, “So, what do you think?”
“What do I think about what?”
“What do you think about what? About the state of the goddamn economy, Ty…What do you think about you coming down here?”
“I don’t know…” He brought his knees up on the table. “I’ve got Jess. We’ve got Thanksgiving this year.” He winced at the lie, not sure why he said it. “Anyway, it’s probably better to just keep it a Friedman thing down there, don’t you think?”
“In that case, Ty, how do you feel about giving me back the dog?”
He laughed again. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. I’ve been feeding him pretty good…”
“Ty…” Karen said, sniffling, “I do love you, baby…You know that. You’re one of the best men I’ve ever met. I just hope you can somehow understand. I’ve been gone since I was eighteen. And now they need me. I don’t know how long. I can’t say no. I always told you I wasn’t a perfect bet.”
Hauck took a sharp breath. He guessed he’d seen it coming. “I always thought you were a damn good bet, Karen.”
“You keep yourself safe, Ty Hauck,” she said, “you hear? I’d make you promise me that, but we already know just how little that means…”
“I’ll do my best.”
They hung up, the click of the phone carrying a kind of finality that made Hauck pause. He rubbed his head and drained the last of his beer.
Tobey sat up, his ears perked.
He could call someone, like Beth had suggested. His sister, Angela. In Massachusetts. Or Warren.
Talk.
Instead, he looked straight at the dog, who seemed primed for something. “C’mon—before you bail out on me too.”
He threw on a sweatshirt and went out on the landing, climbed the stairs leading up to the flat, tarred roof. Tobey followed. It was a clear, starry night, warm for late October. He stared out at the dark expanse of the sound, the lights of Long Island twinkling in the distance, six miles away.
He kept an old set of golf clubs up here, along with a trove of beat-up range balls he had scrounged. Hauck looked out at the sound and then back at Tobey, who sat watching him.
“Whaddya think, guy, go with the eight or a friendly seven?”
The terrier cocked his head.
Hauck took out his eight.
He dropped a ball on the worn carpet remnant he used for a tee mat, swung through a couple of practice swings, then launched a crisp, high-arcing fade over the lot next to his neighbors, Richard and Justine, and deep into the darkness of the sound.
I do love you, Ty…
He hit another.
Karen had brought him back from the long slumber he’d been trapped in, in the years after Norah died. From the vise of guilt he felt. From hiding out up here…
He sent another ball deep into the darkness.
She taught him how to smile again. To fight for someone again. How to love. He thought of the freckles on her cheeks and the laughter in her drawl and the time they’d spent together. He couldn’t help but smile. You’re a damned good bet, Karen…
His mind flashed to David Sanger. His daughter, not much older than Jess, in tears. “Why did this have to happen, Mom?”
I’ll find out, he’d promised.
Hauck blasted six more balls into the darkness. The last was a high-arcing beauty, soaring with the perfect right-to-left draw, plopping to a stop on some green deep in the void, six feet from an imaginary pin.
He looked at Tobey. The dog jumped up. Hauck threw the eight iron back in the golf bag.
“C’mon”—he winked—“we’re puttin’, dude!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It was the end of a long, crazy Saturday night, and Annie Fletcher was beat.
They had served over forty tables, a hundred and twenty plates. For the first time in the restaurant’s life, they’d gotten a three-time turn.
Since Annie’s Backstreet had opened, just over a year ago, they’d been trying to get the place off the ground. She’d been at it since seven that morning, starting with the fish market and the farmer’s market in Weston, picking out squash and heirlooms, and the local bakery she used for fresh-baked sourdough and olive bread. They had stuffed twenty veal chops, hand-rolled two hundred agnolotti stuffed with chicken and feta, made twenty off-the-charts chocolate crespelles. Her hair smelled of spattered
grease. Her nails were caked with allspice and Madras curry.
They call it sweat equity, right?
Annie looked over the rows of empty tables, finally sitting down to pick at an iceberg wedge salad and sip a glass of wine. This exhausted never felt so good.
It had been a slow, building process. They didn’t have the “glamour” opening. They weren’t in the hot location. They were situated in Stamford on the other side of I-95, amid the antique warehouses and next to a tiling factory. OTMO, they called it, tongue in cheek. Other Side of the Metro-North. Not exactly Tribeca. They didn’t get throngs of young people lining up on the sidewalk drinking beers or families pouring out of the movie theaters. But it was her place. In her style. Cross-beams on the high ceiling. Linen-colored, stuccoed walls. An open kitchen with copper pots hanging from the racks. “Comfort food with a point of view.”
After the debacle at her last place in the California wine country, with her partner (and husband) siphoning off the register (and the checking account!), it closed literally overnight. She had put everything she had into that place. Her dreams, every penny in the world, her trust.
It had almost cost Annie her son.
She’d gone from someone who had everything going for her to a person who had no place to go the next day. To someone who had liens. Nothing. Jared, who was eight and needed a special school. She’d tapped into money from her parents, and she hadn’t done that since she had left home.
Then Sam, whom she had gone to the Culinary Institute with, called out of the blue and offered her this chance to do a new place. Start a new life.
So she left. Healdsburg. San Francisco. Where she had a history and a name. To come east, start over.
Everything rode on this.
It was eleven. The staff was finishing wiping the place down. Annie was leafing through the receipts over a glass of wine. Some of them were heading to Café Mirage, where a lot of restaurant people got together after-hours to let off steam.