“Where the hell are they going?” Veccio muttered. “Not back to the city …”
“No,” Kersh mumbled, his eyes glued to the taillights of the Cadillac. Off the exit ramp, the sedan nearly bottomed out as it spilled out onto the street, and the smell of burnt tires filled the car.
The Cadillac made another turn and Veccio stayed with it, two cars behind. The rain was coming down harder now, blurring the glare from the headlights and streetlights across the windshield like an abstract painting.
“What street are we on?” Kersh said.
“Uh …”
“What are they doing all the way out here?” Kersh muttered. He picked up the walkie-talkie and radioed the units back on Mermaid Avenue. “They’re still moving,” he said. “Everyone sit tight. They have to come back your way to complete the deal. We’re on them.”
They sped by a row of shops, the multitude of lights washing over their faces and deceiving them as to the actual distance they were traveling behind the Cadillac. Up ahead, a traffic jam at an intersection filled the night with the incessant blast of car horns and the revving of disquieted engines. Kersh watched the Cadillac swerve around the mess of cars and jam itself up against a curb. The Cadillac paused for a moment, caught behind a line of other cars, then somehow managed to negotiate its way through the confusion. It hopped the curb and took off. A second car, provoked by the Cadillac’s actions, attempted the same feat, but wound up getting stuck at an angle on the curb. Very quickly, the Cadillac’s taillights started to ascend up the street and into the darkness.
“You gotta move this thing,” Kersh said, keeping his voice calm.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Veccio said, sounding irritated at the whole situation. “Look at this asshole …”
Up ahead, Kersh continued to watch the taillights of the Cadillac dwindle into the night until they disappeared completely.
“Damn,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice calm … while his fingernails cut into the dashboard.
It took them several minutes to work their way through the traffic jam at the intersection, and when they finally broke free, the Cadillac was nowhere in sight. Veccio pushed the sedan up the street, letting off the accelerator until the car slowed to a moderate speed.
“What now?” Veccio said.
“Drive up this street,” Kersh suggested. “Maybe we’ll see them.”
“Damn …”
“It’s all right,” Kersh said. “John knows what he’s doing. Looks like he was right, too—they must have a second stash down here somewhere.”
“I don’t like this,” Veccio said.
“Turn down this street,” Kersh said. “I think …” He froze, his eyes widening, his heart seeming to pause in his chest. The only sound was a small, ceaseless ticking in his left ear.
In a faint, miserable whisper, Bill Kersh said, “Holy shit…”
Looking out the window, his hands still gripping the console in front of him, John watched the lights of Brooklyn whiz by. The rain was steadily growing stronger. Outside, the night rumbled with the thunder, and a brief flash of lightning lit up the horizon.
The Cadillac was heading along the northbound lane of 65th Street.
He recognized the area, having grown up just a few blocks from here—the lights of the liquor store and the all-night convenience store at the end of the block, the unchanged string of houses on either side of the street. The Cadillac rolled up 65th Street impossibly slow, and every house was suddenly familiar as well—every street corner, every stoop, every lamppost, every crack in the pavement, and every fire hydrant. With the fluid momentum of the vehicle came the increasing discomfort of being in such familiar territory with these animals.
John knew the area, knew the people. Mickey and Jimmy’s counterfeit could be stashed anywhere and with anyone. When John had been growing up, this particular area had been a burgeoning network of smalltime criminals. Over time, the network had become a thriving metropolis of gangsters, hit men, and thieves.
Jimmy Kahn’s Cadillac bumped along the pavement and came to a jerky halt at a traffic light. Theirs was the only car at the light. With his hands still on the console, John could feel the engine oscillating through the dashboard. Through the windshield, the glow of the car’s headlights illuminated the shower of rain.
Glancing down toward Jimmy’s lap, he could see the handle of a gun protruding from Jimmy’s waistband.
Staring at the traffic light, he thought it would never turn green.
And then it did.
Behind him, one of the back doors swung open and Mickey sprang out into the night. The door slammed, causing John to jump, and he spun around to see Mickey through the passenger window hustling quickly across the empty street and disappearing into the blur of sodium lights along 65th Street.
“The hell—” John spun around in his seat as Jimmy jerked the Cadillac’s steering wheel in a complete circle and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The car leapt forward and peeled through the intersection, its rear tires fishtailing along the wet pavement. The headlight beams washed along the storefronts, and the pungent stink of exhaust fumes filled the car.
Confused, John turned and stared at Jimmy, who was racing back down 65th Street toward the parkway. The speedometer needle was steadily rising.
“What the fuck you doing?”
“Where the fuck’s your money? “Jimmy said. “You tell me right now.”
“Back at Nathan’s. What is this? Where the hell’s Mickey going?”
“Deal’s off. We’re taking your money. If you got a problem with that,” Jimmy said, “you’re dead. And so is your wife.”
The words struck like a hammer. He was aware of a steady heat creeping up through his legs, spreading throughout his body, and coursing down the length of his arms. He could feel his body begin to tremble, to overload, and his ears went fuzzy, filled with cotton.
“Mickey don’t hear from me in twenty minutes,” Jimmy continued, “that means the deal’s gone bad, and Mickey’ll do some damage.”
Around him, the world spun on its side.
“You and your wife don’t gotta die over someone else’s money.”
Then something burst inside him. He sprung at Jimmy Kahn in a frantic, unthinking reflex, fingers clawing, arms flailing wildly. With all the force he could muster, John slammed the heels of his hands against Jimmy’s face, tearing at his face, his eyes, felt the solidity of the man’s flesh, the bone beneath, the texture and feel and temperature of the man’s skin. The assault was unexpected, and Jimmy’s head jerked to the left, spiderwebbing the window and leaving behind jagged streaks of blood and hair.
Jimmy’s hands jerked the wheel, and the car lurched forward, swerving into oncoming traffic. The lights of the city seemed to spin all around them, distorted and made ridiculous by the rain-slicked windshield.
John grabbed two handfuls of Jimmy’s hair and repeatedly slammed his head into the window until the glass finally shattered. Freezing rain and biting wind burst into the car. He could feel granules of glass pelt his face, wet with rain, freezing in the blinding wind. One of Jimmy’s hands came off the steering wheel; he began clawing blindly at John’s face.
Leaning over the seat, John slammed his own foot down on the accelerator. The car blasted through traffic. Letting up, John slammed the brakes. The car spun wildly, and Jimmy cracked his head against the front of the steering wheel.
John took one hand and grabbed Jimmy around the neck, squeezing until he could feel the lifeblood coursing through Jimmy’s veins, then jerked the man’s head forward, repeatedly slamming his face against the car’s steering wheel. Jimmy uttered a strangled moan, coughed up a gout of blood across the dashboard and instrument panel, and shot a flailing hand upward, clawing blindly at the ceiling.
Before them the oncoming traffic split down the center, headlights cascading around them on either side in undulating streamers of light, horns blaring, tires screeching atop the wet pavement. He felt th
e tires catch, lose ground, spin ineffectually, then shoot the car forward like a missile. The lighted façades of innumerable storefronts were suddenly large and real all around them. There was a rattling crash, and the Cadillac hopped the curb on the opposite side of the street. A sound like a gunshot rang through the night as one of the front tires exploded, propelling the vehicle forward and to one side. The lights of a single storefront washed across the windshield in a dizzying blur—then brick—then street—then more lights.
There was a bone-crushing crash as the Cadillac advanced over the sidewalk and ran straight into the front of a pharmacy. The car was jarred to a sudden standstill while a shower of concrete and glass rained down upon it: large bricks and pieces of debris slammed the crumpled hood, windshield, and roof in a tumultuous concussion as a waft of white dust surrounded the vehicle.
The force of the crash sent both him and Jimmy against the dashboard, and he felt a sudden burst of pain flare up along his ribcage and upper thigh. His head jerked forward and rebounded off the dashboard, and a fantastic display of carnival colors blossomed beneath his eyelids. The driver’s side door burst open, and he was hammered by freezing rain.
Pressing a clawed hand into Jimmy Kahn’s face, John reached down and tore Jimmy’s gun from his waistband, then scrambled up over Jimmy’s body and out onto the sidewalk.
He started to run.
“Jesus!” Kersh shouted. “Tommy!”
Veccio spun the sedan’s wheel and the car jumped lanes, sluicing through the wet street. “I see it. Jesus Christ!”
The sedan shuddered to a stop against the curb and a wall of people, bundled against the weather, stood like spooked cattle around the partially destroyed front of a pharmacy. Kersh already had his door open and one foot on the ground before Veccio could slam the sedan into park. Too many people, too much confusion. Kersh struggled through the crowd, scraping shoulders and elbows and knees, until he broke free to the inner circle of onlookers and stopped, his heart banging furiously against his chest.
The Cadillac they’d been tailing was here, driven front-first into the building. The car’s hood was crumpled like an accordion, and steam and the smell of burnt rubber filled the air. The driver’s side door flung open.
Kersh withdrew his gun and approached the vehicle.
Jimmy Kahn lay motionless behind the wheel, one leg slumped out onto the sidewalk, the left side of his body soaked in a cocktail of sleet and rain and blood. His face and scalp, too, were covered in blood and lacerated in a number of places. But he was still alive.
Veccio slammed through the crowd, his eyes bulging at the sight of the telescoped Cadillac. He wasted no time shooing the mob away, though they did not go willingly and remained standing in a semicircle around the perimeter of the scene. On the street, cars were slowing for a better look.
“John!” Kersh shouted, peering into the Cadillac. He could see no one else. “John!” Gun still leveled at Jimmy, he scanned the crowd for any sign of John. “Christ!”
Veccio appeared at Kersh’s side and stared at Jimmy Kahn. “Where’s John?” he asked Kersh.
And although he suddenly thought he knew, he did not say so to Tommy Veccio. Instead, he pulled his cell phone from his jacket and slammed it on the hood of the Cadillac. “Here. Get another car down here to take this son of a bitch.”
“Where are you going?”
Coming down 65th Street, Kersh had recognized the area almost immediately …although the plausibility of his initial thought had then seemed inconceivable. He’d been a few blocks from here a couple of nights ago …
John’s father’s house …
“Where are you going?” Veccio shouted again.
Getting behind the wheel of his sedan, Bill Kersh did not answer.
The world a blur around him, John continued to run in the direction of his father’s house. His body was racked with pain, his vision blurred from the crash, his head throbbing in a thousand different places. In his right hand, Jimmy’s gun felt weightless. Time was lost to him now, indistinct and confused, and he had no concept of how much of a head start Mickey had on him. Up ahead was the Eleventh Avenue intersection, and he cocked his head back, closed his eyes, and pumped his arms and legs for all they were worth. The rain was coming down in thick, blinding sheets; it felt like cold, wet nails being driven into his body. His lungs burned, his breath hot and sour.
He turned onto Eleventh Avenue and nearly spilled to the ground to make the turn. The rain was coming down in torrents now, whipping him from every direction, and he threw himself forward and forced himself to charge down the street. In a hideous blur, the street appeared to tilt and waver before his eyes—and he saw, up ahead in the darkness, the lumbering, hunched shape of Mickey O’Shay moving down the sidewalk toward his father’s house.
Mickey O’Shay.
He felt something rupture inside him. Somehow, his legs began moving faster. Mickey’s shuffling form was suddenly close, very close …
A flashbulb image in his head: Mickey on the tenement roof, pointing the gun at him. Then Katie’s voice over the phone—I trust you, John. The accumulation of Kersh’s concerns suddenly tore through his mind like the tips of a million white-hot needles. In that instant he saw his father, dying in a starched white hospital bed, holding Katie’s hand, their mouths moving but speaking no words—
Then he was on Mickey like a jungle cat, all pain and exhaustion wiped out by the adrenaline pump of his wrath.
Mickey turned around, startled, just as John cracked him across the face with Jimmy Kahn’s gun. There was the give of Mickey’s skin against his hand, the solidity of his skull, and then Mickey pinwheeled backward and lost his balance. He crashed to the sidewalk, the wind knocked from him, a large bloody gash across his left cheek.
Mickey had no time to recover.
Propelled by a confusion of rage, John was on top of Mickey a moment later, his teeth clenched, his arms swinging wildly. He grabbed the front of Mickey’s long hair and continued to slam the back of his head against the concrete, blood and rainwater splashing up around him in icy sheets. Mickey didn’t utter a sound. With his right hand, John brought the butt of Jimmy Kahn’s gun down on Mickey’s face, felt the give of Mickey’s jaw, felt the rupture of his right cheekbone. A loud buzzing rattled through his head, and his eyes went funny, causing Mickey’s image to double and triple before him. Rainwater and blood stung his eyes. A burning against his own face, down his neck: Mickey’s fingernails digging into his flesh. Yet he did not relent; he was consumed by fury, driven by an unmitigated rage. Trapped heat inside his body, burning straight through to the surface of his flesh. It was as if a well of liquid madness had volcanoed from deep within him. Closefisted, John pummeled Mickey with his left hand. And each time he brought his fist down on Mickey’s face, he felt that madness augment and multiply and grow—filling him with the divine ability to continue until forever.
I trust you, John. The way she’d looked when she’d told him she was pregnant, that they were going to be parents … the way she looked in her sleep, bundled—
Mickey swung an arm up, clipping John’s chin, and quickly reached inside his green canvas coat for his own gun. In the blur of movement, he managed to hold the gun up—poised in the rainy night—then, with a stuttering hand, swung it—
John stumbled back, his mind reeling, his body strung like a taut wire about to snap.
He emptied Jimmy’s gun into Mickey O’Shay’s body.
He couldn’t hear the sounds of the gunshots. He couldn’t hear anything. In the cast of the moonlight, Mickey’s eyes fluttered and his mouth coughed up a bubble of blood. His body, partially propped up off the ground, shook violently, then fell backward, splashing against the curb. Mickey’s gun fell into the street. One leg twitched. He could see Mickey’s chest rise once, twice—then stop.
The world continued to spin. Sounds began filtering into his head again, too sharp, too overbearing. Bursting, furious, he felt himself rise to his feet, onl
y faintly aware of the empty click of Jimmy’s gun in his right hand … only faintly aware that he was smashing his foot into the side of Mickey’s ribs with feral brutality. He could single in on no specific thought or emotion, just merely felt them all course through him like charges of electrical current.
And then, as if he had run into a brick wall, he felt the world rush back to him. Pain exploded through his body, and his legs felt suddenly weak. He felt himself begin to tremble, hesitate, fluctuate—then crash down on top of Mickey’s broken body.
Blood soaked the front of Mickey’s canvas coat. Mickey’s face, slack and openmouthed, stared sightlessly up at the rain. Tracks of blood, seemingly too bright, ran from his mouth.
Mickey O’Shay was dead.
Shaking, John thought he heard police sirens rushing up the street. Then the rush of a car engine, in the street and very close to him. Looking down, he saw he still held a clutch of Mickey’s hair in his fisted left hand. To his right he could feel the looming presence of his father’s house bearing down on him and, doubled over in the pouring rain, one leg in the rain-swollen gutter, he managed to turn his head in its direction.
One of the upstairs lights was on in the house. Katie’s silhouette stood in the window, looking down at the street. Looking down at him …
Katie …
He’d brought it home to her. Like a common criminal, and after all he’d done to keep his two lives separate, he’d brought it home to her. The notion struck him like a sledgehammer to the chest, and he nearly collapsed under the weight of his own inescapable horror.
He did not hear Bill Kersh’s voice behind him, did not hear the rush of sirens along 62nd Street, did not hear the downpour of rain all about him.
His eyes remained on his wife.
He wanted to go to her, but found he could no longer move.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
HE AWOKE EARLY IN THE SOFT AMBIENT light of a new morning. Moving from the bedroom and into the hallway, the floor cold against his bare feet, John made his way into the kitchen and paused by the sink. Outside, the world was white with snow yet untouched by the toil of the day. The sky was gray and cloudless and absent of birds.
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