by R.J. Ellory
And then he closed his eyes, and for a brief while he tried to forget who he was.
50
THE HOUSE ON HIGHLAND AVENUE
Isabella did not wake when Madigan finally got up from the sofa. It was past eight on Saturday morning, and though he was off-shift there were things he needed to do.
Now would have been the moment of desperate regret had they slept together. He was relieved that he had drawn a line.
He sluiced cold water on his face in the upstairs bathroom, got a clean shirt—unpressed—and put it on. He took his jacket, his car keys and cellphone, and—perhaps unnecessarily—he scribbled a note for Isabella.
Out for a couple of hours. Call me on the cell if you need me. Don’t go out.
Vincent.
As he drove away from the house, he thought about Charlie Harris. The more he thought about Charlie, the less he believed that Charlie was working for Sandià. Sure, he had said whatever he’d said to Charlie, and a few hours later he’d received the call from Sandià. But Charlie could have spoken to anyone in the interim.
Madigan’s working himself foolish over some dead freakin’ drug dealer.
Oh yeah, what dealer was that, then?
I don’t know, some asshole who got dug in the head with a screwdriver.
And it may not even have been whoever Charlie spoke to. It could have been someone who overheard the conversation. Charlie’s manner, his attitude, his seeming lack of concern for what Madigan might have been doing with the case . . . Or maybe Charlie was just a good liar. After all, wasn’t he—Madigan—the best liar of all? He was the Patron Saint of Liars. Did he consider that he possessed the monopoly on falsity and deceit?
Madigan looked at himself in the rearview as he pulled to a stop a half block from the precinct house.
He started to question what he was doing.
Don’t go there, Vincent.
It’s a dark place. You’ll get lost.
No, my friend, you really don’t want to go there.
It’s too late to change things now.
Things have a natural order.
Doesn’t do well to go upsetting them . . .
You are who you are. You’ll always be this way.
Better to accept it. Fighting the inevitable is futile . . .
Madigan hunted through the glove box for something—anything. A ’lude, a couple of Xanax, some Percocet. There was nothing.
He got out of the car and slammed the door shut. He was frustrated. He was anxious. Anxiety and fear were founded on ignorance, nothing more. And of what was he ignorant? Well, there was an easy answer to that one. Who was working for Sandià? Who—inside the department, inside this precinct—was working for Sandià?
Well, as the old saying went, you set a thief to catch a thief. Who could have been better than Madigan to establish who else was an internal line out to Sandià?
No one, that’s who.
It was just a question of how to do it.
First and foremost, he had to consider who could be in the frame for this. There was Ron Callow and Charlie Harris in Robbery-Homicide, but that was just one small unit within the precinct. There were the detectives in Vice, Sex Crimes, Fraud and Cyber, and above them their relevant squad sergeants, unit chiefs, the precinct captain, the divisional commander . . . hell, all the way to the top. Anyone with a rank of detective 3rd class or above could access the system from any workstation. Anyone could’ve taken a look in the Valderas case file and decided to lose some of the paperwork.
It was not feasible to determine the identity from information that Madigan could leak. There were just too many people. To do such a thing would require giving a different piece of information to every single person, and seeing which of those came back to him via Sandià. The precinct guys perhaps, but the divisional commander?
So if he could not go after them, he would have to set it up so they came after him.
That was the only way.
He would have to set some bait and see who came sniffing around.
It was the proverbial “house on Highland Avenue,” something that came from his father, and where it came from before that Madigan had no idea. As a child, it was always the answer.
Where are we going, Dad?
The house on Highland Avenue.
Where’s that?
You’ll see when we get there.
It didn’t mean anything. It was just his father’s way of never answering the question, of maintaining a mystery. You kept looking for someplace that wasn’t there.
Madigan had to get the inside man to go someplace to find something. And it had to be something that Sandià could not ask Madigan to do, someplace Madigan could not or would not go. Somewhere that would compromise their relationship. Then Sandià would have to send his other man, and Madigan would be there to find out who it was. Once that was established, then the second play would have to work, a play that would leave Madigan and Isabella Arias out of the firing line, Melissa too, even Bernie Tomczak. And Madigan had Bernie as a resource, Walsh also, and whoever else he could think of that could be trusted not to talk.
It was chess, that was all, but a game of chess where the opponent was unaware that the game had already started.
And what would raise Sandià’s interest sufficiently to prompt immediate action?
The money, of course, but—even more than the money—the possible identity of the fourth man, the one who’d killed his nephew, shot his three accomplices, and then calmly walked away with the proceeds.
Simple, in theory, but in reality? In reality it was something else entirely.
Madigan reached his office and closed the door. He sat down at his desk and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply for a while, tried to focus, tried to center himself, but it was hard. So many thoughts, so much confusion. Isabella, Bernie Tomczak, the motel, the money, the wounded daughter, the dead sister, the fact that he’d nearly compromised everything by sleeping with the damned woman the night before . . .
He needed a drink. He fetched a half bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the lower desk drawer, selected the cleanest of two coffee cups from the top of his filing cabinet, and poured a couple of inches.
He downed it in one, felt the familiar and comforting bloom of sensation in his chest.
He thought about Cassie. She was going to be eighteen in twenty-five days. Then he thought of Adam and Lucy and Tom, and he remembered what Sandià had said.
If children grow up without a father there will be things about themselves that they will never understand.
There were two ways to grow up without a father. The father can be absent—physically, tangibly absent. Or he can be mentally and emotionally absent. The former applied to Madigan’s own children, perhaps the latter applied to his own father. The “house on Highland Avenue” had perhaps been a metaphor for all things of significance. Had his father ever really been there for him?
In all honesty, there was little that aggravated Madigan more than the whining, victim attitude of those who blamed the past for their current misfortunes. People were not simply a product of their past. They were a product of so many things. There were situational dynamics—elements that came into play from so many different quarters. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts. An only child, a distant father, a timid mother, always in the shadow of her husband, Madigan had had to create his own entertainment. It was always the smarter kids that got into trouble. They bored more easily. They needed greater mental stimuli. Imagination, if not channeled into something creative and constructive, became a tool for manipulation. Some kids were just too dumb and too trusting to tell lies. Madigan, however, had always been a liar. Lying to get what he wanted, lying to get attention, lying to get money, lying to get out of trouble. Lying—in some cases—to get into trouble, just as a means by which he could relieve the monotony of being a kid.
Is this what had happened? Is this where it had all started? And had this laid the foundation for the way in which
he had failed his own children?
It was a dark place. Such thoughts, such feelings. Was this now where he would live for the rest of his life? Was this all he had to look forward to? On a scale of right to wrong, how far had he traveled, and was there any way back? Perhaps more accurately, was there any way back alive?
Madigan had never overly concerned himself with his own memory. What people thought of him after he was gone had never been of any concern. But now? Did it matter now? Was he now anxious for what his children might think of him, what they would be told, what they would find out? That was egotistical in itself. The assumption that they would want to know, that they would even care. After all, how significant a part had he played in their lives? What had they already been told? What had Angela told Cassie? Your father? Jesus, Cassie, don’t even bother. He was a loser, a drunk, a liar . . . He was back then, and I’m sure as hell he still is now. People don’t change. Actually, no, that’s not true. Some people do change. It’s people like Vincent Madigan that will always be the same. And had Cassie’s perspective been slanted to such a degree that she would never consider another viewpoint? And if so, wasn’t that all he deserved?
But then there was Adam and Lucy and Tom. Why were they any less important than Cassie? Because they were all still young enough to have impressions carry weight and substance. And where would those impressions come from? From the very women he himself had lied to, betrayed, cheated on, deceived, misled, and abandoned. These were the character references for his life. But the kids were also young enough to be influenced the other way, to have their viewpoints reversed. To do that, though, Madigan would have to be there for them. And he was not.
Cassie was the first, had always been the first, would always be the first. Cassie was an adult now, she was a young woman, not a child, and every thought he had of her carried the weight of obligation, of responsibility, of duty, of fatherhood, and it seemed now that in all things he had been found wanting.
His life.
Christ, what a fucking mess.
Madigan rose and paced the room. He had to bring it all back together. He had to tie every thread, every loose end, every fragment of this thing together and walk away. Was such a thing possible? Was he delusional, crazy, simply tempting fate and Providence? Had he just done too many bad things to even warrant another chance?
And what about Isabella? How long would it be before she learned the truth of what had happened, that he—Vincent Madigan, her knight in shining armor—had been the one to put her daughter in Harlem Hospital with a bullet in her guts?
And if she did find out, what would she do? Try and kill him? Go to the department? Forgive him?
Madigan’s mind was stretched every which way. The nausea had not passed, not completely. The tension in his chest, his lower gut, now seemed to be spreading like some neural-borne virus throughout his entire body. He had to get out. He had to get some air. He had to think.
A block and a half from the precinct Madigan found a diner. He sat in a window-facing booth; he ordered coffee, a Danish. He watched people go by. He looked at their faces, their eyes, their expressions, and he wondered about the truth of their personal worlds. He thought about their lies, their misdemeanors—the infidelities, the broken promises, the deceptions and evasions and family secrets. He thought about the unknown pregnancies, the abortions, the hit-and-runs, the embezzlement, the thefts, the tax evasions. He thought about the truth, how some considered it cheap and expendable, how others considered it a disease that could be cured with just a few more lies. The compassion and humanity of youth and innocence obliterated by degrees. Eventually people were no longer themselves. They were what they believed the world wanted them to be. Because that was what it was all about. That was the real sleight of hand, the real deception. The self-conviction, the self-convincing that everything they did, everything they had done, was for the best. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I didn’t want to make it worse than it already was. Had he known, he would have been devastated . . . I thought it best to keep it to myself. Just for now. Just until I think he can cope. Bullshit. It was all bullshit. We all spent our lives lying to one another, to ourselves, to the rest of the goddamned world. Why? Because of greed, avarice, lust, racism, hatred, prejudice . . . And what did they say about prejudice? A fixed opinion founded in fear? A prejudgment. Madigan had been prejudiced all his life. Prejudiced toward himself, prejudiced against others. It was a lie. Had been then and still was now.
And the truth? The truth was that he would have to lie some more to get out of it.
Madigan drained his coffee cup, left the uneaten Danish behind. He walked from the diner back to his car and turned it around. He headed up First toward Paladino.
Everything was on the line—not only the lives of Melissa and Isabella Arias, but also those of Bernie Tomczak, Duncan Walsh, even the lives of his children. Most of all, perhaps even least of all, there was his own life.
Madigan knew he had to talk to Sandià, and he had to talk to him now.
51
THE MASTER PLAN
“Seneca?” Sandià echoed.
Madigan nodded. He tried to smile. He tried to look relaxed. He tried to give nothing away. “Yes,” he said. “Seneca.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said that luck was nothing more than the meeting of opportunity and preparation.”
Sandià considered it for a moment, and then he nodded. “I like that,” he said, “but what that has to do with anything, I do not know.”
Madigan took a deep breath, but silently.
The strength of the heart had been measured—not in emotional terms, not in terms of love or passion or betrayal, for this was not possible. It had been measured in physical terms, in pounds per square inch, the force with which it could move so many gallons for so many yards at such and such a speed. But the heart, irrespective of its power, was silent until fear presented its face. Until panic or terror or trauma assaulted the senses, the heart went quietly about its powerful secret business. Now Madigan’s heart was truly alive for the first time in as long as he could recall. Whatever he might have experienced before was nothing compared to this. Now he was cleaner than he had been in a long time. There was little in the way of drugs and alcohol to quell the anxiety, the alarm, the terror he felt in that moment.
Everything was in the balance now, for Sandià recognized no parameters when it came to exacting revenge for wrongs committed against him.
Madigan lit a cigarette, inhaled, exhaled, closed his eyes for a second and then started talking.
“Just as you said before, we have known each other a long time. Enough for us to share a degree of respect, perhaps a limited degree of trust. I mean, what the hell, eh? In this business you can trust no one completely, but of all the people I deal with, I think it’s safe to say that you have always been a man of your word, and I respect you for that.”
“That’s very good of you to say so, Vincent, but what this has to do with—”
“Bear with me,” Madigan interjected. He took another drag of his cigarette. “I have been thinking about this thing that happened, and I have been thinking about trust, and I have also been thinking about Seneca and his viewpoint about luck. Whoever robbed that house did not have luck, good or bad. Whoever robbed that house and killed your nephew had preparation and opportunity . . .”
“Well, that is obvious, Vincent—”
“Maybe so, but this is the thing I don’t get.” Madigan leaned forward. “People who work for you, right? They get taken care of. I mean, look at you and me for an example. I work on a give-and-take principle. I give you what you want. I take from you what I need. You give me what I ask for. You take from me what you require to make business go smoothly. We’ve never had any problems. We’ve never had any disagreements. We’ve always seen eye to eye, right?”
“Sure, Vincent, sure.” Sandià shifted in his chair. He had an expression on his face—implacable, calm, unattached perhaps.
This was business. His personal relationship with Madigan—factually—meant nothing. If Madigan was not there, someone else would take his place. He was curious as to where Madigan was taking him with this line of conversation. He was questioning the destination. It had been merely four days since the robbery of the house, the murder of his nephew, and whatever patience he might have possessed was growing thin. He wanted answers. He wanted results. If answers and results were not forthcoming, then people were going to die.
Sandià waved his hand. Get to the point, Vincent, that gesture said.
Madigan cleared his throat. “And during all these years we have worked side by side, have I ever given you cause for concern? Have I ever given you any reason not to believe what I have told you?”
“No, Vincent, of course not. As I said before, we have had . . .” Sandià paused. He smiled like he was trying to force himself to be good-humored, to take the edge of seriousness out of the conversation. “We have had what I would call a mutually beneficial relationship.”
“So I want you to listen to me now,” Madigan said, “and I want you to hear me out, and when I am done we can talk about this thing and see if we can make sense of it.”
“Say what you want to say, Vincent. Enough of this bullshit, okay?”
“That’s the point right there,” Madigan said. “It isn’t bullshit. I’m not bullshitting you. I’m gonna tell you something, and this is going to come out of left field, but I want you to consider all options and possibilities before you dismiss this out of hand.”
“Okay, okay, okay . . . Jesus, Vincent, you’re getting me fucking angry now. Enough with the lectures. Tell me the details here.”
“I think . . . Hell, Dario, I think your nephew was going to rip you off.”
Sandià looked at Madigan. A frown flitted across his brow. It was there, and then it was gone. He smiled, then he looked intense, confused even, and then he smiled again. The smile became a laugh, and then he was shaking his head and saying, “Jesus, Vincent, you had me fucking going then . . . I thought you were gonna tell me something that made some sense.”