by John Lutz
“I been tol’ he was dead.”
“Then somebody’s jerking you around.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time for that. All cops do, ain’t it, jerk us plain folks around?”
“Some cops sometimes,” Quinn admitted. “Not me, not now. All we want’s some straight information about Galin. He’s dead now, so if you owed him something, it doesn’t matter.”
“I din’ owe that man nothin’.”
“We want Galin’s killer,” Quinn said. “We’ve got no interest in you otherwise. What we’d like to know is, was he dirty?”
“Why should I-” Lake decided in mid-sentence to be silent. His powerful neck muscles flexed as he scrunched his head farther back into his pillow. He was obviously going to be stubborn.
“ ’S’cuse me, please.” Quinn stuck his head outside the room’s door and said something to Butterfield, then ducked back in.
Lake glared at him without moving his head. “Don’ matter what you do. Till I get-”
“Shut up,” Quinn said, hardening his tone. “Be a smart asshole for once and shut up till you know the game and decide whether to play.”
Lake seemed to relax, but only slightly. This was the kind of cop talk he knew. His breathing was loud and rhythmic in the quiet room.
There was a knock on the door. Quinn went to it and was handed something, then closed the door and came back to stand again by Lake’s bed. He was holding a Bible.
“You a religious shit-head?” he asked Lake.
“Long-ago Baptist, if it be any of your business.”
“I’m a religious man, through and through. It’s why I’m a cop. I don’t miss church on Sundays, and I try to live by the good book. You believe me?”
“Don’ believe a thing you say.”
“That hurts me. I’m gonna offer you a trade. You don’t want it, then we can do the lawyer thing and you can talk or go mum or whatever, but the deal will be off the table.”
“That legal?”
“For Christ’s sake, I’m a cop.”
“Yeah, that’s what I be thinkin’.”
Quinn held the Bible out flat in his left hand and rested his right palm on it. “I’m gonna tell you this, and I’m swearing to it on the Bible. You tell us what we want to know about Galin, and…well, I can’t guarantee you won’t do some time on the charges against you, but I can and do guarantee, on this good book and by all I hold holy, that you won’t serve more than eighteen months.” He handed the Bible over for Pearl to hold. “Now, we can go that way, or we can do this by another book. You can call your lawyer in and we’ll go through the usual bullshit, and maybe you’ll do okay and only get fifteen to twenty years, but this offer will be off the table.”
Lake closed his eyes, thinking about it.
Fedderman walked over and pretended to gaze out the window. Pearl held the Bible and looked at Quinn, standing there with his arms crossed, staring down at Lake. Beneath the medicinal minty scent in the room was the stench of Lake sweating under the white sheet that covered his lower body. Perspiration gleamed on his muscular chest and shoulders, on his broad forehead.
Lake, still with his eyes closed, said, “You can really do this?”
“I can do this.”
“Guarantee me an eighteen-month cap?”
“Eighteen months or less, and you’ll be out,” Quinn assured him.
Pearl felt a queasiness, watching Quinn telling the truth yet misleading a dying man like this. Hard, hard bastard, Quinn. Believable as an emissary from God.
“We got us a deal,” Lake said, opening his eyes. “But you best be tellin’ me the truth.”
“You’ll know soon enough that I am,” Quinn said. He didn’t shake Lake’s hand, but he reached down near the steel cuffs and touched it. Lake replied with a wriggle of his fingers.
The man in the bed sighed. He was going to unload. Quinn had pulled it off. Pearl felt a guilty elation.
“Galin was dirty,” Lake said. “I paid him once a month to lay off my dealin’s an’ to let me know if somethin’ heavy was movin’ my direction. I do gotta say, he kep’ to the deal.”
“How much did you pay him?” Quinn asked.
“Ten thousand a month, then later on he wanted fifteen.”
“He get it?”
Lake snorted a kind of laugh that hurt him and made him wince. “I paid. He be worth it.”
“This go on till he retired?”
“No. Till six, seven years ago, when I went in for a short stretch. Nothin’ to do with Galin, though. Got stopped for a traffic violation, had a trunk fulla product. Shitty luck, was all it was. What it usually is. When I got out, I knew Galin was gonna retire soon.” He smiled. “An’ of course I wasn’t dealin’ then anyways.”
“No need to get into that,” Quinn said.
“I wasn’t surprised when I heard Galin was shot,” Lake said.
“Why’s that?”
“I always had the feelin’ I wasn’t the only one payin’ him. I’d give you the other names if I knew ’em.”
Quinn thought Lake might be lying, but he didn’t want to push it. “You’ve told us what we wanted to know.”
“I gotta ask again,” the doomed Lake said, “you bein’ straight with me? I can count on less’n eighteen months behind walls?”
Quinn took the Bible from Pearl, then gripped it tightly and held it out toward Lake, above the bed.
Pearl thought he looked like a faith healer ready to cast his spell. Was Lake going to rise up from the bed and walk, his handcuffs miraculously opened and dangling from his wrists?
“If you’ve been truthful to me,” Quinn said, “I promise that you’ll be free, Vernon. Within eighteen months, you’ll be free.”
“I been truthful. I swear to God I have.”
“I believe you, son.”
When they left the room, Quinn returned the Bible to Butterfield, who carried it back toward the nurse’s station.
In the elevator going down, the three of them were alone.
Pearl said, “Sometimes you frighten me, Quinn.”
“Vernon Lake’s an asshole who killed his share of people,” Fedderman said. “He knew something that could help us save lives. Quinn didn’t actually lie to the man.”
“That’s what frightens me. And makes me a little queasy.”
“Grow up, Pearl.” Fedderman said.
“Yeah. Grow up, grow old, then die. Makes being born not seem worthwhile.”
“Every right thing you do,” Quinn said, “you don’t feel good about it afterward.”
26
Black Lake, Missouri, 1985
The bitter November air was sharp and full of scent. It froze the hair in Marty’s nostrils and caught like a blade in his throat.
Eleven-year-old Marty Hawk stayed well to the side and slightly behind his father as they trudged up the snow-crusted rise toward the ridge of trees lined like silhouetted Halloween shapes against the gray sky. When the wind blew, it rattled the ice in the branches. Marty’s breath fogged out ahead of him.
He held his rifle cradled in his arm, pointed at the ground as instructed. Marty had shot the rifle before, but not with the high-velocity rounds that were in its breach and magazine now.
The rifle was a Mossberg bolt-action 30–06 with Marty’s name artfully carved into its wooden stock. It had been his birthday present last year. He’d practiced with it for months.
Now, finally, his father had decided he was ready.
As they approached the frozen ridge, his father shifted his ancient Winchester rifle to his left hand, extended his right arm to the side, and made a downward motion with the flat of his palm. Man and boy slowed their pace and moved as silently as possible through the snow to the top of the ridge.
The trees and some bent and frozen underbrush lent them cover as they surveyed the lay of lightly wooded land beyond them. Through the trees they could see the wide flatness of the lake, not quite frozen but with sheets of ice in its dark water.
> There was movement ahead, and Marty and his father hunkered lower. Marty almost slipped and slid back down the rise, but his father reached over to grab his wrist and steady him. His father raised his gloved hand to his face and held a forefinger in front of his mouth, in a signal for Marty to be silent. Marty watched the steam of his father’s hot breath swirl around the raised finger and nodded. The rifle was getting heavy. He hefted it slightly higher so the tip of its barrel wouldn’t touch the snow.
Marty’s father pointed toward a doe and a large buck with a fine stand of antlers less than a hundred yards away. The two animals had their heads down, feeding on some grass they’d managed to find beneath the layer of snow. The buck raised his head, as if to show off his antlers, sniffed the air, then resumed feeding.
Marty felt his father’s hand squeeze his shoulder, and his father pointed to him, then to the buck.
Marty’s head swam. He didn’t want to kill this beautiful animal, but he knew his father saw it as food as well as prey.
It was food.
And it was prey. And Marty was a hunter. At least he would be. He knew what his father expected of him. Marty would do almost anything not to disappoint his father.
His father squeezed his shoulder again, brushing his back as he removed his hand.
Marty raised the rifle and sighted down its barrel at the peacefully grazing buck. He centered the sights on the deer’s large chest, just above the left leg. A heart shot.
The steam of Marty’s own breath rose in the icy air, for a second obscuring his vision. His heart slammed against his ribs and his blood rushed hotly through his veins. The blackened gun sight before him trembled.
He drew a deep breath, as he’d been taught, then slowly and quietly exhaled. They were downwind of the deer, and he knew he could take his time. The animals couldn’t pick up their scent. If he and his father simply were still enough, the deer wouldn’t bolt.
The end of the barrel was now steady. Marty adjusted his aim ever so slightly to the left, allowing for the winter breeze, and ever so gently squeezed the trigger.
The rifle’s sharp report cracked through the still morning, and the stock kicked back hard against Marty’s shoulder. He had to catch himself again to keep from sliding downhill.
When he looked for the deer he saw it beginning to run and was sure he’d missed. He didn’t know whether to be sorry or glad.
Then the deer stumbled, struggled up again, took a few more leggy strides on limbs that refused to work, and collapsed.
“We won’t have to track after that one,” Marty’s father said beside him. Then he laughed and hugged Marty, who found himself laughing and crying simultaneously, and hugging back.
He saw that the Mossberg was lying in the snow and dutifully stooped to pick it up, brushing snow off its bolt action. Should he have worked the rifle’s bolt and readied it for a second or even third shot?
“You did good!” his father said beside him. “How do you feel?”
Marty thought about the question and decided. “Good.”
He looked about and saw that the doe was nowhere in sight. There were tracks in the snow, leading off toward the lake.
His father noticed that Marty had seen the doe’s tracks. He didn’t smile, but he nodded his approval.
Marty and his father topped the ridge and trudged downhill through the snow toward the dead deer, their weight back on their heels. There was no breeze now, and the air was like still crystal that shattered each time their boots broke through the crust of snow. Marty had forgotten to put his gloves back on and his hands were cold. Through the trees, he caught glimpses of brilliant red near the dead buck, like scattered jewels in the snow.
The buck lay on its side, its neck twisted so that its head was at a sharp angle. Its eyes were open and blank. When they were close enough, Marty stooped low and reached toward the animal and petted it.
“A fine shot,” his father said proudly. “Damned fine!”
Marty would never forget that morning. Not so much because of what had happened, but because of what was to follow.
27
New York, the present
Quinn reminded himself that June Galin had a bad heart. She stood squarely in the doorway of her house in Queens, as if braced to defend her home against invaders. A bee droned close by, abruptly changed direction, and passed within inches of her face. She ignored it.
“We need to look around the place,” Quinn told her.
“You mean search it,” she said.
“Yes. That’s what we’re asking you to let us do.”
“What do you think you’ll find?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we want to search.”
June’s gaze darted to Pearl and Fedderman, standing just behind Quinn, then to the radio car parked behind Quinn’s big Lincoln at the curb.
“You have a warrant,” she said, “or you wouldn’t have brought people with you to help search.”
“We do have a warrant, dear. We thought we’d ask and might not have to use it. We were hoping for your cooperation, considering it was your husband who was murdered.”
She flinched when she heard it so bluntly stated.
“You won’t have to serve the warrant,” she said, stepping back. “Come on in. Just try not to mess things up too much.”
Quinn waved for the two uniforms waiting in the radio car to join them, then led the way past June Galin into the house. Though she’d made room for them to enter, they still had to edge past her. It was as if she was putting up a token defense for her dead husband.
“We’ll try to be neat,” Pearl assured her as she squeezed past, the two uniforms at her heels. They were officers Nancy Weaver and Vern Shults. Shults was near retirement and could be sitting behind a desk, but he preferred to be out in the field. Weaver had worked her way up to detective rank, but had screwed up again somehow and was back in uniform. She was a talented detective, but she liked to sleep around, especially with other cops. It had been good for her libido, but bad for her career.
June Galin walked to the sofa and sat down squarely on the middle cushion. She picked up a throw pillow and held it in her lap, hugging it, as the five invaders began what, in her mind, must be a vandalizing of her home.
“Possibly we can find something that tells us who your husband met the night of his death,” Quinn said.
“I’ve already searched for that,” June said, not looking at him.
“Then you understand why we must.”
She didn’t answer. Almost certainly Joe Galin hadn’t confided in his wife. She didn’t know she was defending honor already lost.
Quinn began opening drawers. The warrant specified that the object of their search was evidence that might shed light on who’d been with Galin the night of his death. But out in the street, before they’d approached the house, Quinn had made it clear to everyone what they were searching for once they got inside. It was the same thing police auditors and bank examiners were trying to find, only they were searching in paper form or on the Internet, or for a safety deposit box. Everyone was looking for Joe Galin’s secret cache.
Looking for money.
Across the bridge, in Manhattan, something else had been found.
“Go on in and take a look,” the uniform in the hall said. He was a young man with old eyes. His uniform was a size too large for him. He was pale, slender, with a prominent Adam’s apple. Acne scars pitted both cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He could have passed for seventeen if it weren’t for those eyes. “I’ll go back in there if I have to, but I gotta say it ain’t high on my want list.”
Detective Sergeant Sal Vitali and his partner Harold Mishkin exchanged a glance.
“You say the super found her?” Mishkin asked. He was a small man in his fifties, with a receding chin and a sprout of gray mustache. He had arched gray eyebrows that gave him a perpetual expression of mild surprise. Vitali thought Mishkin always looked like a befuddled accountant interrupted at his work.
<
br /> The uniform nodded, swallowing. “Yeah. In the bathroom. Said a neighbor complained about the smell and the flies.”
“Flies?”
“Yeah. So many of them. Like thousands. They got into the ductwork, and some of them made it into the apartment upstairs.”
“Where’s the super now?” Vitali asked. He had a voice like gravel in a can, and a head of unruly curly black hair. He might have played Columbo if Peter Falk hadn’t beaten him to it. Vitali traded on that in cold weather, wearing a wrinkled trench coat and squinting a lot. Mishkin let it pass without comment. Anyway, Sal wasn’t nearly as subtle or polite as Columbo.
“The super?” the young cop asked, almost as if he was in a daze. “He’s down in his basement apartment. He ain’t feeling so well.”
“What’s your name?” Vitali asked.
“Henderson, sir. Ron Henderson.”
“You ride with a partner?”
“No, but there’s another of us here. Gary Mumford, he was nearby and did a follow-up on the squeal.”
Vitali remembered two radio cars parked outside.
“Where’s Mumford?”
“Went out to get some air. He ain’t feeling so good, either.” Henderson glanced at his watch, as if events were on some kind of schedule. “He oughta be back soon.”
“You stay here in the hall,” Vitali said. “Don’t let anyone else in this apartment till we give you the go-ahead. Understood?”
Henderson nodded and swallowed. Vitali thought the young cop had the most prominent and hyperactive Adam’s apple he’d ever seen.
Vitali looked at Mishkin. “You ready, Harold?”
“Almost,” Mishkin said. He drew a small tube of mentholated cream from a pocket, squeezed a little on his finger, and applied it beneath his nose. “You want some?”
Vitali did, and followed suit. Usually he didn’t bother, and it was only Mishkin, with his famously weak stomach, who used the menthol fumes to keep from upchucking. But after listening to young Henderson, Vitali figured this time should be an exception.