by R.J. Ellory
“No, sweetheart, you got me all wrong on that one. I am an asshole of the first order. I am a first-class asshole. You have no idea . . .”
“You don’t think so?”
“I know so.”
“You think I don’t see what you’re capable of? You think I don’t recognize the liar, the cheat, the thief, the corrupt cop in you . . .”
Madigan couldn’t speak. He wanted to, but he couldn’t.
“I’m not so naive, Vincent. I’ve been around people like you and Sandià all my life. You don’t think you’re that different from him. Well, you are. It’s true what they say. Everyone’s a hooker. Everyone is screwing someone for money. You think I don’t see the pills in your bathroom cabinet. They’re not for anything that’s wrong with you. You are not in pain, Vincent Madigan. You’re not an insomniac or a depressive. A drunk you might be, but there’s nothing wrong with you that would justify taking those pills. And people take drugs and they drink for the same reasons, Vincent . . . Because they’re running away from all the bad shit they’ve done. Not what’s been done to them, because people get over that. They survive that crap. They can let go of it. But the stuff they’ve done . . . They can never escape that . . .”
“I am not Sandià—”
“No, you’re not, Vincent. And that’s exactly what I’m saying. I know you better than you think. You have shadows and ghosts just like everyone else, but you are not evil like Sandià. If you spend your life holding on to those ghosts, well, you wind up a drunk and a pillhead, and that’s where you’re at right now. It pains me to see someone who can be a decent human being acting like such an asshole.”
“Hey, what the fuck is this?” Madigan said, suddenly angered by her accusatory tone.
Isabella held up her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just I saw the same thing with Melissa’s father, a good man gone to waste, and I see it in you and it hurts me. I didn’t mean to—”
“Enough,” Madigan said. “I’m not playing these games with you. You are here because I give a crap about you, same way I used to give a crap about most people . . . the reason I became a cop and all that. You are also here because I need you as much as you need me, and that’s all there is to it. This thing ends one way or the other, and either we’ll be alive or we’ll be dead or one of us will be dead and one of us won’t—and what the hell happens to your daughter I do not know. I hope she makes it out of here. I hope she doesn’t wind up orphaned and on the street and turning tricks for crack and dying before she’s twenty-five. Well, I really fucking hope that doesn’t happen because no one deserves that . . .”
“You want to tell Sandià that no one deserves that? I don’t think he has the same viewpoint about it as you and me.”
“I think Sandià is going to have a great deal more on his mind than however many girls he happens to be running out of that building on Paladino.”
“You’re gonna kill him, right?”
“I’m going to do what I can to stop him from killing you.”
“And if you have to kill him, then you’ll kill him, right?”
“If it’s between you and him, or me and him, then yes, I will kill him.”
“I want him to die.”
“I know you do.”
“I would be happy to see him rot in a jail cell for the rest of his life, but preferably I want him to die. Only sad thing is that I will not be there to see it happen.”
“I’ll make sure you get the full run-down, blow-by-blow.”
She smiled. It was brief, almost a fleeting expression, but it was there.
“I am sorry,” she said, “for giving you all this crap.”
Madigan dismissed her apology. “For a while I thought I was married again.”
She laughed at that, not because it was particularly funny, but because both of them were looking for the slightest thing that would ease the tension. Then she rose and said, “I’ll get the food.” She walked around the other side of the table and put her hands on Madigan’s shoulders and just that feeling—the awareness of real honest-to-God physical contact from another human being—made every muscle in his body twitch. Madigan shuddered involuntarily, even let out a small audible gasp, and when she started massaging his shoulders he felt as if he could just sit there and weep until he collapsed from exhaustion.
“Too tense,” she said.
“You don’t say?”
“How long since someone was there for you, Vincent?”
“Was there for me?”
“Someone who didn’t just want something from you, you know? Someone who just gave a damn about how you really felt.”
Madigan did not know how to answer her question.
“A long time, right?”
Madigan felt her hands on his shoulders, the tips of her fingers on the nape of his neck. Her touch was gentle, sensitive.
He turned around in the chair, looked up at her. “No,” he said. “We went through this before, Isabella. This is not what this is about. We are not getting into this . . .”
Her hands were on his shoulders again. There was no pressure, but the mere fact that she was there made it difficult for Madigan to stand up.
“You don’t like me.”
“Isabella . . . seriously . . .”
She leaned down. He felt her hair against his ear, his neck, and then the warmth of her breath was on the side of his face. “What’s the deal here, Vincent . . . You don’t want to?”
He leaned forward. She stepped back instinctively. He took that split second to stand up.
He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but he was speechless.
He just didn’t know what to say.
“Nothing to say?” she asked, echoing his absence of thought.
Again, he didn’t speak. He wanted to stay. He wanted to leave. He wanted . . . He wanted someone else to make the decision . . .
And she did. Isabella Arias. She took three or four steps, and she held his forearms, and before he understood what was happening she was kissing him and he was kissing her back. And he could see right through himself to the small black stone that was his heart, and around that heart were wrapped all the lies he had ever told, and in the middle of those lies—perhaps the greatest lie of all—was the lie he told himself each and every day.
You did it all for the right reasons, Vincent Madigan.
And a close second—even as he felt her hands around his waist, even as he felt the pressure and warmth of her body against his, even as he passed the point of no return with Isabella Arias—he could see the other lie . . . the thing he’d never said . . . the thing he knew he’d have to one day tell her . . .
I am responsible for what happened to Melissa.
I nearly killed your daughter.
It was me—Vincent Madigan—and no one else.
And then there were thoughts of Sandià, of Larry Fulton and Chuck Williams and Bobby Landry, and blood up and down those stairs, and pieces of people, just fistfuls of human beings scattered back and forth up and down that stairwell. The way in which the bodies had just exploded as they were hit by a wall of gunfire . . . a massacre . . . a turkey shoot . . . No one stood a goddamned chance . . . And Bernie’s face in that alleyway and how the blood was on Madigan’s hands as he walked away, all because he owed money to Sandià . . . Hunting through the dash for that wrap of speed or coke or whatever the hell it was . . . Meeting with Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo . . . And what in the name of Christ Almighty was he doing?
He tried to step back, but her hands were around him and he was still kissing her. And even as he was fighting it, he was giving in, succumbing to whatever was happening. And he knew it was just as much him as it was her. He felt the tension breaking down, felt the resistance folding, and he was holding her tight, as tight as anything, and he could feel her tongue inside his mouth, and he wanted nothing more in the world than to feel every inch of her, to be beside her, behind her, around her, inside her . . .
He started m
oving toward the front room, the door to the stairwell.
She went with him. She knew where he was going.
Halfway up the stairs she was taking off her T-shirt, unbuttoning her jeans. She was grabbing at his belt buckle.
“Take it off,” she said. “Undo the damned thing, for Christ’s sake.”
He laughed then, and she started laughing too, and whatever was happening meant everything and nothing. They fell through the door of Madigan’s bedroom, and by the time they reached the edge of the mattress most of their clothes were on the floor. And then everything slowed down . . .
There were tears in her eyes.
He saw that much.
Even as he was kissing her, even as she was kicking her jeans off her feet, even as he was aware of her hands all over him, there were tears in her eyes.
“What?” he remembered asking her. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and her voice caught in her throat as if she were having difficulty breathing.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s gonna be okay . . . I promise . . .”
And for the first time in as long as he could recall he believed that he was telling the truth.
Later, after it was over—after they had struggled with this new thing, the closeness, the physicality, the urgency, the passion, the fear, the release—he lay there with her in his arms and thought of the money beneath the bed, and he wondered what kind of human being he was.
He wondered if he could ever want to be near such a person as himself.
He questioned his own reasons, his motives, his rationale . . . and he listened to her breathing, and he tried not to cry.
He had done this terrible thing to her daughter.
He had killed people and lied—oh, so many lies—and he had worked with Sandià for fifteen years. He was as bad as Sandià, or at least on his way. Was there any hope of redemption?
He had to get out of this. He had to escape. He had to save her. He had to get her away from Sandià and all that Sandià represented. Melissa too. She had to survive.
They all did. All except himself and Sandià. They were the ones who deserved to be punished for what they had done.
And he asked himself then, asked himself if it came down to it, if it really came down to it, would he give up his own life to see Sandià fall, to see Isabella and Melissa away from this nightmare and Sandià buried in a hole somewhere or some stinking jail cell or anywhere where he could no longer hurt or abuse or maim or kill . . .
Could he give up his own life for this?
And beyond this—more important than any other consideration—could he give up his life to know that his children would never discover the truth of who he was?
Yes, came the answer. Yes, I could do this.
And Madigan, terrified at the prospect of such a thing, knew that it was no longer a question of whether or not he could, but simply a question of whether he would.
An eye for an eye.
A life for a life.
Madigan looked down at Isabella Arias, naked there in his arms, and he listened to the sound of her breathing as she drifted into sleep. Amid all he felt, he believed he could hear the echo of that sound in his heart.
He closed his eyes.
He knew that whatever sleep he would find would be awkward and restless.
No more than he deserved.
56
SHE’S LIKE HEROIN TO ME
In the brief hour of twilight before dawn Madigan managed to ease himself out of the bed and escape to his own room. He took the duffel with him, the money within. He was careful not to wake Isabella, careful to make as little sound as possible as he took his jeans and T-shirt from the floor. He made it out to the car and buried the duffel beneath the spare tire in the trunk. Then he went back into the house and took a shower.
By the time Isabella appeared it was after seven. He was dressed, making breakfast in the kitchen, and she was there behind him, her arms around his waist. She felt him tense up, but she said nothing. She merely kissed his neck and said, “You sleep okay?”
“Sure,” he said, and he turned and smiled at her as best he could. He did not know what he was feeling, did not know what he was thinking, and he figured the best solution was to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Madigan did not regret what had happened. He could not regret it. He knew from the experiences of too many years and too many mistakes that regret was a futile waste of time and energy. What was done was done. Perhaps he had never really applied what he knew, but in this instance he did. Beyond regret there was only damage control, avoidance, acceptance, and in some cases the ability to make the problem disappear. The situation with Isabella could not just vanish. It had to be faced.
“Isabella—” he started.
She smiled, but there was something hard beneath the expression. “Do not tell me that this was a mistake, Vincent Madigan. Even if you believe it was, do not tell me that this was a mistake. No one likes to be told that they were a mistake, and unless you are now going to throw me out on the street, then we have to go on living beneath the same roof . . .”
Madigan laughed. He appreciated her directness.
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t going to say that.” He reached out and took her hand. He walked to the kitchen table, asked her to sit down. She did so, and Madigan sat facing her, still holding her hand.
“I am not a good man to know,” he said.
She opened her mouth to speak.
“Let me finish, Isabella . . . please.”
She nodded, didn’t say a word.
“I am not a good man. I am a police officer, yes, but that counts for nothing, as you know. I have made a lot of mistakes. I have done a lot of things that I shouldn’t have done. It is too late to go back and change many of them, but there are some that can be fixed. I have to fix them now.”
“Sandià?” she asked.
“Among others, yes.”
She looked away for a moment, and then looked back. “I expect nothing of you,” she said. “You owe me nothing. What happened last night was something I wanted to have happen, and it did. I don’t know why, Vincent . . . because I am afraid, because I am lonely, because . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know, and I don’t think it matters now.” She smiled, laughed briefly. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You don’t have to marry me.”
Madigan smiled back. “Aw shucks,” he said. “And I went and bought the ring an’ everything.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment, and then Madigan told her he had to go out.
“So eat some breakfast,” she said. “I’ll finish making it, and then you go.”
“Yes,” he said. “Breakfast first.”
A half hour later he was driving away from the house. He’d told Isabella to stay inside, just as before. Nothing had changed. This was the way it had to be until he said otherwise. She neither protested nor argued. She asked if he could check on Melissa for her.
“If I can,” Madigan told her. “I have to do some things. Important things. If I do this right then we’re gonna come through the other side of this . . . okay?”
She reached out and touched his face. He closed his eyes, felt the warmth of her hand against his skin. He had missed this. Oh, how he had missed this.
“So go,” she said. “Make it right.”
And he had gone, all the while asking himself if he could lie to this woman forever, if he could get away with never telling her the truth of what had happened in the Sandià house.
The answer was no. She would have to know. Somehow, sometime, she would have to know. Otherwise he would be starting again with the same old patterns in place.
But then there was another possibility. The good chance that he wouldn’t come through this, just as he had considered the night before.
Could he do this?
Yes, he could do this. There was no other way.
Madigan stopped at the motel and gave a couple of bundles of mo
ney from the Sandià robbery to Bernie Tomczak. He also returned Bernie’s cellphone, the original one that held the recording of his conversation with Duncan Walsh. Bernie knew what to do.
“You made the calls I asked you to?” Madigan asked.
“Sure I did. You think I’m dumb, or what?”
“What time?”
“You know what time, Vincent. Eleven o’clock exactly.”
“There’s gonna be two of them?”
“Jesus, Vincent, of course there are. You told me what you needed, I arranged it. That was the deal. Just cool your jets, okay? They’re gonna be there.”
“If this goes wrong . . .”
“Vincent . . . if this screws up . . . Well, it goes without saying that I am screwed too, right?”
“Right,” Madigan replied. “We are both in this together. If I get deep-sixed, then you do too.”
“Sometimes I ask myself why I like you, Vincent Madigan. I mean, for Christ’s sake, a week ago you kicked me down an alleyway and beat the crap out of me. I think I lost my sense of smell.”
Madigan smiled wryly. “Well, if that’s the case, you ain’t never gonna have to take a bath again. I did you a favor.”
“Sometimes, in fact most of the damned time, you are such a freakin’ asshole.”
“Well, my friend, the feeling is mutual.”
“You take care, okay? Don’t mess it up.”
“Same to you.”
Madigan left the motel, walked back to the car, headed southwest toward the bridge.
He glanced at his watch. Nine forty. An hour and twenty minutes to go.
Madigan was across the street, a half block from Bernie’s place, by ten after ten. He parked near one of the ramps that came down from the FDR Drive. He could hear the traffic thundering across it. He waited until half past and then he called the precinct. He reported a probable cause on the address, said he could do with a couple of uniforms. Dispatch told him he’d have to wait fifteen minutes at least. Madigan said he needed them faster. That didn’t help any.
Madigan sat back and smoked a cigarette. He watched as the two guys entered the building, and then he took the duffel and walked over there. They opened up when he knocked, he gave them the duffel with the two hundred grand in it, and said to sit tight until he came back.