“We can’t go to no hospital,” DuPree said.
“Taking you to see Doc Majors. He’s pulled out more slugs than an army doc.”
“He’s a goddamn vet!”
Monroe laughed. “I always said you was a dog, DuPree.”
The guys in the back of the van laughed.
“Fuck all of you,” DuPree said, and then, “I got a question for you, Monroe. I know you and this Rat guy go back a ways, but why’d you give out one of your coins for his daughter? Ain’t our job to protect her.”
“I’m gonna teach you if it kills me, DuPree. I want you to think about what might happen if that girl wanders anywhere by our streets and something happens to her. What do you think the Rat is going to do?”
DuPree didn’t get time to answer.
“I’ll tell you what he’s going to do. He’ll kill every motherfucker he can, and that’s a lot of motherfuckers.”
They rode in silence for a few miles then DuPree turned to Monroe.
“You were right.”
“About what?”
“I couldn’t have killed him if I had a gun pointed at his head. That’s one mean motherfucker.”
Monroe nodded his head as he switched lanes. “Yeah.”
CHAPTER 50
The Prodigal Son
Wilmington, Delaware
As I exited the gate, the glow of the fire lit up the sky. I turned the opposite way to avoid running into any cops who might be coming. There was a chance some would be heading in from the north, but I doubted it. From the back seat, Pete’s meek voice struggled with a question.
“Where are we going?”
“Home, Pete. Just stay put, all right?”
“If I’m going home why can’t I get up?”
“You’ve already seen too much of me.”
“But I thought—”
“Stay put!”
When I looked in the rearview mirror, Pete’s head was buried in the seat. I waited until I felt we were safe, then called Jimmy. He answered on the second ring.
“Borelli.”
“Meet me at the park by St. Elizabeth’s. Fifteen minutes.”
“What for? You didn’t do anything crazy, did you?”
“On second thought, make that twenty-five. I need to make a stop.”
“Goddamnit—”
“Meet me.”
I stopped and gave Doggs back his money, taking the locker key in return. “Thanks, Doggs. Consider what you did a good deed.”
“And that’s it? A fuckin’ good deed? This is the respect I get for all the years we’ve known each other?”
I flashed him a smile that wasn’t a smile. “The respect went out the window with the drugs. You don’t deserve it anymore. And by the way, if anybody asks, I was here playing cards tonight.”
“Of course you were, and what time did you leave?”
I looked at my watch. “Around two.”
He flipped me the finger, perhaps practicing for when he lost his voice, then disappeared through the magical door into the back room. I went out to the car, did a quick count of the money in the trunk, then drove to meet Borelli.
Jimmy was parked alongside the curb right by the bus stop at the old bench. He was outside pacing, a smoke in his hand. I pulled up behind him.
“Stay put, Pete. Hear me? I’ll only be a minute.”
“Okay.”
I got out and walked up to Jimmy.
“Why am I here, Fusco? This better be good.” His concern had grown to anger.
“I know where your boy is. But first I need to know what part you played in Bobby’s murder.”
He looked at me as if I were nuts, and as if he wanted to kill me, both at the same time. “I don’t know what the fuck you’ve been smoking, but I had nothing to do with Campisi’s murder, and if you know one fucking thing about Pete, you’d better tell me.”
I needed some final convincing, and Borelli’s sincerity showed. I turned and walked back to my car, him screaming at me the whole way. I opened the back door and leaned inside. “Pete, get out. Your dad’s here.”
The kid almost jumped out of the car. When he hit the street he raced to his father. I stayed back, not wanting to interrupt this reunion.
“Petey! Jesus Christ, is that you?” Jimmy raced to meet him, wrapping his arms around the boy so tight I was afraid he’d hurt him. He kissed his cheeks and hugged him. “Goddamn, Petey. Are you all right?”
I stepped further back, giving them space until I heard Jimmy calling me by name. I didn’t want his kid knowing who it was, though it was probably too late for that. “Jimmy, how about Pete gets in the car while we talk, huh?”
He nodded but before he got in his father’s car he reached out to shake my hand. “Mr. Fusco, I don’t know how to thank you enough. I thought they were going to kill me.”
Ah shit. I didn’t know the kid knew me. I shook his hand but didn’t smile. “You can thank me by forgetting everything you know about tonight, especially my name.”
“You got it,” he said, and got in the car.
Borelli rushed over to hug me, tears flowing. “Nicky, I can’t express myself. How did you do it?” Then he stepped back and looked at me. “Why did you do it?”
“Don’t worry about how; the less you know the better. This has already cost me dearly.”
“Name it, Nicky. Anything.”
I shook my head. “You’ve still got me wrong. I don’t want anything from you. What kind of fuckin’ scum would want money for saving a kid? But you’re going to need to pay for this, and it won’t be easy. Those Mexicans will assume it was you who did this, or at least that it was you who put somebody up to it. They’ll be after you.”
“I’ll have to go into hiding.”
“First you have to clear Bugs.” I pointed my finger at him. “That’s your priority. Clear Bugs. And when you do those reports, my name better not be mentioned.”
“Did you kill Bobby?” His voice seemed almost apologetic.
I shook my head again. “No. I didn’t kill Bobby.” I lowered my head. “Jack McDermott did that, but he’s dead.”
“You—”
“No! Jack helped me get Pete out of there, but he didn’t make it. The guys guarding Pete got him.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Yeah, so if there’s any possible way to pin Bobby’s murder on the Mexicans, see if you can do that. I’d hate to see Jack’s parents suffer any more than they have to.”
“I’ll do what I can, but I’m not staying around here long. My family has suffered enough. I don’t know what I’m going to do or how to protect them. This Mexican is nuts.”
Pussy. You don’t know about suffering. “Yeah, well this isn’t all wine and roses. You have a lot to answer for about the way you handled this case, trying to pin it on Bugs.”
Borelli didn’t say anything for a moment. He shook his head slowly and avoided looking at me. “You’d do the same if they had Angie or Rosa. You’d sell your soul if you had to.”
I thought about it and realized he didn’t think like me. Probably not many who did. I’d do exactly what I did tonight. I’d kill every motherfucker involved. “Maybe,” I said, and headed for my car.
“Thanks again, Nicky.”
“Stay there, I’m not leaving.”
I opened the trunk and got the bag out, took it back to Borelli and handed it to him. “Take this, you might need it.”
Jimmy opened it and his eyes went wide. “Jesus Christ, there must be a couple of hundred grand in here.”
“Four hundred fifty roughly.”
Jimmy stared at me. “And you’re turning this in?”
“I’m telling you to take it. Nobody knows about it, and you’ll need it to stay hidden.”
He stood there shaking his head.
“One thing. I want you to give fifty to Donna, not because she deserves it but because she’s stuck raising Bobby’s kid with no father. She’ll need it.” I almost forgot the key. I reached into my pocke
t and handed Borelli the locker key. “This fits a locker at the train station. Bobby’s got two keys of coke in there.”
Jimmy teared up. “I had you all wrong, Fusco.”
“Yeah, people do that sometimes.”
“What about you? He’ll find out who you are. He’ll be coming for you.”
“Who?”
“The Mexican. His name is Carlos Cortes—El Jabato.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You better get educated, because now that you’ve done this, he will hear about you.”
“Worry about yourself. Get your family out of the state and start a new life.” I nodded toward the money. “You got enough there to do it.”
“I will, and thanks again for everything, but I’m worried about you. This Carlos guy, he’ll kill anyone—civilians, police—he’s even killed mayors.”
I looked at Borelli. “Mayors don’t kill back.” Maybe it was the look, or maybe what I said, but he shut up after that.
We shook hands one final time, then he got in his car. I saw him hugging Pete as I left. That felt good. I should have kept some of the money for Angie and me, but that would have tainted things. Sometimes it was better to struggle through life as an honest man.
It took me less than two minutes to get home. I checked the time, but it was too late to call Bugs. I’d do that in the morning. I climbed the stairs quietly, undressed in the hall, then crept into the room and snuck into bed. Angie was lying on her back, sound asleep. I stared at her for a minute, so beautiful with a hint of moonlight shining through the window on her face.
When I started this new life, I made promises to Angie and to God. Now I’d broken both. Breaking the promise to Angie worried me more, though; God knew what was going to happen; He could have stopped it. Angie trusted me, and I’d let her down.
I lay my head on her belly, gently, hoping to feel something, but I knew it was too early. It felt good all the same. New life was in there, and I prayed the baby was more like Angie than me. The world didn’t need another Nicky Fusco.
CHAPTER 51
Midnight Vigil
Brooklyn, New York
Sherri Miller was in intensive care, on the third floor. Mazzetti rode the elevator all the way up with a clenched fist, then stormed into the ICU waiting room. Four uniforms paced the hall. Two more occupied chairs, heads held low. Nowhere was there sign of Frankie Donovan. It was a good thing, too, because Lou was ready to kick his ass.
“Where’s Donovan?” he asked, in a voice too loud.
“Right here.” That from behind him.
He spun, saw Frankie and almost raced to him, eyes burning. “What the fuck is wrong with you, taking her into a situation like that? She’s a goddamn rookie!” He shoved Frankie, hard.
Frankie didn’t respond, keeping his head held low. “Not now, Lou. I can’t think about it now.”
“Fuck you and your ‘can’t think about it.’ Tell that to Miller.” He shoved Frankie again. “You should have called for backup. You should have called me.”
Frankie shoved back. “You think I haven’t been through this? I made a decision and I was wrong, okay? Let it go!”
“Let it go? Let it go!”
Lieutenant Morreau walked up behind them. “That’s right, Lou. Let it go. We’ve got an officer in ICU, and she’s going to need all the support she can get. Not a couple of assholes fighting over who did what wrong.”
Lou nodded to Morreau but he still glared at Frankie. “I hate to see it happen to someone so young. She had such a great attitude.”
“Hey, Mazzetti,” Morreau said. “She’s not dead for God’s sake. Give her a shot, will you?” He shook his head. “Somebody update me.”
“She’s critical,” Frankie said. “Three shots, one in the gut, two in the thigh and one in the shoulder. The gut one is causing most of the problems. She’s lost a lot of blood. BP is low, and somebody said they had concerns about her kidney.”
“What happened, Donovan? How did this go down?”
“We were checking him out, thinking it was a pervert, based on what some neighborhood kids told us.” Frankie paused. “To be honest, Sherri said it might be Jackson, but I ignored her. We made a move to come up behind him, but he must have sensed something. When we came around the corner, he took us by surprise and opened fire.”
Morreau waited.
“She saved my ass. Knocked me out of the line of fire and into the street. He ended up shooting her.”
“Christ’s sake!” Lou said.
Frankie almost turned on him but didn’t. His voice lowered and he choked up. “I know, Lou. It should have been me. But I can’t go back and change it. Believe me, if I could, I’d do it. She didn’t deserve this.”
Morreau frowned, but not in a bad way. “Put it all in the report. For now, let’s get together and see what we can do to get her through this.”
They took turns sitting in her room, waiting for some improvement. She had been unresponsive since she came in, and trying to get information from the doctors was like trying to learn Russian in one day. About halfway through the night, Lou came out into the waiting room.
Frankie got up when he saw him, anxious.
“She’s awake.”
“And?”
“Doctor said she’s still not good, but he thinks she’ll pull through. Gonna take some time to recover, though.”
Frankie waited but Lou didn’t add any more. “Will she be able to go back to the job?”
“He doesn’t know. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” Lou got a drink from the water fountain and came back. “Sorry about what I said.”
Frankie slapped his back. “Don’t worry; I’d have said the same.”
After maybe another hour, the doctor came out and said she was stable, but still serious, good enough that they could go home and get some sleep, though. Frankie yawned and stood. “Sleep sounds good, Lou. I’m heading out.”
“Go on,” Lou said. “I’m staying for a while. We got nothing to do today anyway.”
“Except find that psycho, Lisa, who was married to him.”
“Yeah, except that.” Lou leaned back and closed his eyes. “When you find her, try not to kill her, okay?”
Frankie went home, caught about two hours sleep, then popped up. Not that he wanted to get up; it was simply that he didn’t trust leaving that woman out there alone. Besides, he owed Shawna a special scoop on this. Maybe she’d pay him back with something special of her own.
As he dressed, he realized something was wrong—the prospect of Shawna perhaps granting him sexual favors wasn’t even exciting him. Was he losing it? But as he drank his coffee, he recognized the real reason—Kate. Images and thoughts of her bothered him every time he thought about being with another woman.
Just my luck.
He was in the middle of making a second cup of coffee when the phone rang. He grabbed it off the table. “Donovan.”
“Detective Donovan, this is Sam down at the station. They just found a woman’s body in a motel room across the street from where the other one was killed. She was naked with her throat cut. Guy at the scene says it’s your girl, Lisa Johnson.”
“Son of a bitch! Guess she wasn’t in on it after all.”
“What’s that, Detective?”
“Nothing. Just talking to myself. Thanks for calling, though. Tell them I’ll be down in a little while.”
Frankie hung up and went back to getting that much needed second cup of coffee, but before he poured it the phone rang again. He snatched it up and answered with a bit of irritation. “Donovan.”
“Still grumpy in the morning, huh, Bugs?” It was Nicky.
Frankie glanced at the clock. “What are you doing calling so early? Everything okay?”
“You’re clear,” Nicky said.
“What?”
“Clear. Case solved. Over. You’ll have no more trouble from little old Wilmington, Delaware.”
Frankie went to pour his coffee. “What th
e fuck? Don’t leave me hanging. Tell me about it.”
“Not much to tell. Borelli did all the work. Turns out Bobby was into drugs, as we knew, and he crossed the wrong guys. Seems like he had a big mouth, but we already knew that, too.”
“Yeah, that we did.” Frankie paused. “Does Donna know?”
“I suspect she does by now. Borelli said he was going to tell her.”
“So how did it bust? How did Borelli find out? He didn’t seem like he was hot on the trail of anything when I left.”
“Guess he didn’t share with us, but he did a good job. Hey, he cleared you, didn’t he?”
Frankie sensed that Nicky wasn’t telling the whole story, but he knew if Nicky Fusco didn’t want to talk, there was nothing going to make him. “All right, Nicky, I owe you. I mean big time.”
“Big time, huh? What’s that, three large subs?”
“You got it. Next time I’m down.”
Nicky laughed. “Don’t make it too long or you’ll have to make it four subs; Angie’s pregnant.”
“What? Holy shit! That’s great. I’m happy for you guys.”
“Yeah, me too. So get down soon. It’ll be good to see you under better circumstances.”
“Same here. And tell Angie I said hi, and Rosa, too. Please thank them for all the food—”
“Yeah, yeah. You know that’s not necessary.” Nicky paused. “Listen, I gotta go. I’ll see you later.”
“Thanks again.”
Frankie hung up and sat quietly for a moment. Something was definitely wrong on that end. He walked around his apartment, smoking the first cigarette of the morning. Damn, that one tasted good. He looked at the clock again, six thirty. Early, but Donna should be up. He called and she answered right away.
“Frankie, is that you?”
“It’s me. Are you okay?”
“I was going to call you later,” she said. “They got the people who did it. It was some drug people.”
“I heard. That’s why I called.”
There was a moment of silence, then she said, “I’m sorry for all the things I said about you. I didn’t mean them.”
“I know. And listen, don’t worry about money. If you have to, move in with Mom.”
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