The Water's Edge

by Daniel Judson

  “Where did LeCur live?”

  “I don’t know. But the last few days he was hiding out in a motel somewhere.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “No.”

  “Did his partner?”

  “No. One never knew where the other was. That way they couldn’t turn on each other.”

  Bechet thought about that, then switched off the recorder. He looked back at Falcetti.

  “How much do you owe Scarcella?”

  “Ten grand.”

  Bechet nodded, looked forward again. “Thanks, Bobby, you did good. I’ll get you some water now.”

  He got out from behind the wheel, was passing by the open back door when Falcetti said, “Hey.”

  Bechet stopped, looked at his friend.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Falcetti said. “I didn’t know you’d get caught up in this. I needed the money, you know. It was only about the money.”

  “You knew people would get killed, though, right? The couriers. That other girl. And not just strangers, but Abby, someone we both knew. You knew that, right?”

  Falcetti nodded. “Scarcella isn’t the kind of guy you want to owe money to.”

  “I don’t know, Bobby. Scarcella, it turns out, was the least of your problems. He’s a scary man, but he wouldn’t have killed you over ten grand. LeCur, though, he wouldn’t have thought twice about cutting you open if it served his purpose. His partner, too, by the sound of it. Hell, killing you meant they wouldn’t have to pay you your share. Plus, you knew too much. They were probably going to kill you next anyway, once they knew they didn’t need you for an alibi.”

  Bechet waited but Falcetti had nothing to say to that. What more, at this point, needed to be said? Bechet walked to the far end of the loading dock, where there was a stainless-steel sink mounted to the wall and some paper cups in a clear plastic sleeve on a small shelf beside it. How many times, Bechet wondered, had his father washed his own hands here, after cutting up the bodies of the men he had killed for money? How much blood had the man hosed toward the drain in the floor? How many men had died here, the face of a man with not one speck of kindness in his heart the last thing of this world they saw?

  Bechet ran the tap till the water was cold, then filled the cup up. As he did this he heard Falcetti enduring another fit of coughs, these, though, different from any that had come before, weaker, shorter, more like gasps. Bechet listened to them—even after the cup was filled and the faucet was turned off he remained there at the sink, his back to his friend, and listened. Falcetti was dying now, there was little doubt about that, and even if Bechet was somehow able to prevent it, he couldn’t. In the end, he did the only thing he could do. He poured the water down the sink, tossed the cup aside, and walked back to the sedan, stood there and looked at his friend as he drowned in his own fluids. It took a long moment for Falcetti’s gasping to stop—his eyes were closed and thankfully, never opened—but when the gasping finally did, when Falcetti’s life was at last gone, Bechet turned away and got to work.

  Opening the trunk of the sedan, he found a box of garbage bags and a bone saw, just as he knew he would. He removed them both and tossed them aside. Moving quickly, he pulled the clear plastic tarp from his old Triumph motorcycle and spread it out on the cement floor alongside the sedan. Keeping Falcetti’s body wrapped in the blanket, he laid it on the tarp, then rolled it over several times, wrapping it up. Things would be easier, Bechet knew, if he did what he had been taught to do—sever the limbs and the head with the saw from the trunk, stack these pieces onto the torso, and then wrap the whole thing up. Easier to move that way, easier to load into the trunk—and, too, the remains could be scattered in a number of far-off locations. But it just wasn’t in him to do that, not to anyone, never mind a friend, even one who had betrayed him. Bechet lifted the body—there was just no weight like deadweight, and he only had one good hand—and placed it in the trunk, the rear shocks compressing slightly. With the hose Bechet sprayed the backseat, washing the blood off its nylon covering. What had spilled down to the carpet had already dried, and no amount of scrubbing would get that out, so Bechet grabbed an old blanket from a locker and laid it over the stain. After that he washed the blood he had hosed out of the sedan toward the drain, then aimed the hose down the drain itself, making sure to flush all trace of the blood away. Finally he found the industrial cleaner that his father had left behind and poured it down the drain. Emptying the container, he tossed it in the trash.

  Back in his bedroom, Bechet removed a laptop computer from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and turned it on. While he waited he removed his boots, grabbed a new pair from storage, and put them on. Opening the window in the bathroom, he dropped the boots into the East River. By the time he came back to the computer, it was running. Connecting the digital recorder to the USB, he uploaded the file containing his conversation with Falcetti and then transferred it to a flash drive. Shutting the computer down, he returned it to the cabinet drawer, then, pocketing the flash drive, climbed down the concrete stairs to the open workshop.

  He looked at his watch, had forgotten that it was broken, so he removed it and tossed it into the trash. He looked toward the clock mounted on the brick wall in the corner where his boxing equipment was, had used that clock to time his rounds back when he had first come here to nurse his wounds and get back on his feet—rounds on the speed bag and heavy bag, rounds jumping rope, rounds of shadowboxing till the sweat poured from him, of sit-ups and squats. Now this clock told him that there were less than two hours till sundown. Just enough time, then, to drive back to the East End—Noyac first, to get rid of LeCur’s sedan and what it contained, then leave Scarcella’s salvage yard with his own untraceable one—and, after that, Southampton, Miller’s apartment first, and then, if he dared, if all looked right, a certain motel before finally calling Castello, setting what needed to be done into motion. The next two hours would require, considering what was now in the trunk, great care, but Bechet was nothing if not careful.

  Just these things left, Bechet thought, and then all this would be done. He opened the garage door, backed the sedan out, then pulled the door closed from the inside, locking and reinserting the bolts. Back outside, after one more look around, Bechet got behind the wheel and made his way through the narrow streets of Williamsburg to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the flash drive in one pocket, the key to LeCur’s motel room in the other. One thing left to do, maybe two. Fifteen minutes later Bechet was eastbound on the Long Island Expressway, the late afternoon sun, or what could be seen of it through the shrouding clouds, looming in his rearview mirror. It descended just a little bit with each dozen or so miles the sedan crossed. Moving in this way, the dulled sun seemed to Bechet like some kind of natural odometer, as ominous as it was patiently relentless.

  During the last moments of daylight—the somber end to a somber day—Barton steered Miller’s pickup into the parking lot outside Tide Runner’s. Mancini’s car wasn’t there yet, and though the rain had stopped, for now, at least, Barton chose to wait behind the wheel. Even with the windows closed she could hear the low rumble of the canal, the sound of the water rushing from Peconic Bay to Shinnecock Bay, moving with the force of a deep and unobstructed river. The locks, then, were open. Barton waited for a few minutes, her stomach tight, her heart racing just a little bit, then finally got out and walked across the lot to the wide but short set of stairs leading down to the restaurant. She heard not only the rumble of the water, the unrelenting force of it, but also the high-pitched hiss of its movement through the concrete channel as well. It echoed off the flat walls, was the kind of noise that, when first heard, scrubbed the mind of all thought, if only for a quick moment. Barton’s thoughts, however, remained with her.

  She waited at the bottom of the stairs, a little lost in all that sound, watching the canal lights reflecting on the choppy surface. She thought of news footage she had seen of the tsunami in Southeast Asia a few years ago, the way the wave had come in
and swept away lives. That footage had replayed over and over again on her television, and each time she saw it all she could think about was how easily, and so often without warning, lives could be, by act of man or act of nature, erased.

  She heard the sound of someone on the steps behind her and glanced at her watch. It was 6:38. Turning, she saw Mancini at the top of the stairs. He walked down to her, and they stood face-to-face, a man with shoulders like a bull and a round gut and a woman who for too long now had been frail, been what she didn’t want to be, less than she could be. Both in dark coats—Mancini in his wool overcoat, Barton in the leather jacket Miller had given her—and both wearing galoshes—over work boots for Barton, something of a silly sight, but she didn’t care about that, and over Italian loafers for Mancini. The parts of his shoes not encased in the dull black rubber were immaculate, as shiny as a clear summer night.

  “What’s going on?” Mancini said. He had to speak up to be heard over the din filling the space around them. Barton hadn’t heard his car approach, hadn’t heard his door close, so maybe he had parked not in the lower lot, where she had parked, but in the upper, secondary lot, an overflow lot, the farthest border of which was just feet from the train tracks, where the bridge met solid land again. His vehicle would not be seen from the road there, a precaution she realized she should have thought of and taken herself.

  Mancini surveyed the area around them, did so quickly, then turned his line of sight across the canal. She followed it to the western end of the bridge, where the bridge met the opposing bank and last night around this time two young men had been mutilated and then hanged.

  “Thanks for meeting me, Detective,” Barton said.

  “We shouldn’t really be here, Kay, you know that.”

  “I thought it would be good for us to have a look around.”

  “What for?”

  “It might help make things clearer.”

  “What things?”

  “The things I’ve been thinking about this afternoon.”

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” Mancini said. “Roffman’s in his office right now, and I thought I might follow him when he leaves, see where he goes.”

  “I’ll come right to the point, then.” Barton watched his face as he surveyed their surroundings again. “I know what’s going on,” she said. “I know what you’ve been up to, and what you’re up to now. I just wanted to let you know that if there’s anything I can do to help, you can count on me to do it.”

  Mancini looked at her, not right away but after a moment, when he was done with his second visual search of the area. He looked at her almost casually, but she knew that was just a mask. He looked first at her face, lingering there for a bit, then up and down the length of her body before returning again to her face. It seemed at any moment that he might smile, but he didn’t. Barton felt suddenly, oddly, in this stare of his, naked.

  “You look tired, Kay,” he said finally. His voice was flat, almost dismissive. He sounded like a father telling his child it was getting late, time to go to bed now. “You should probably go home.”

  “You might want to hear what I have to say.”

  “Maybe another time.”

  “No,” Barton said, “I think we should do this now. Out in Montauk you offered me something. I’ve had time to think about it, and it’s something I very much want. I’d like to know tonight whether or not I can actually have it.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember offering you anything, Kay.”

  “Just hear me out, Detective. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and that’s that. But if I’m not, if what I think is going on really is going on, then maybe you and I can help each other.”

  Mancini studied her for a moment longer, then said, “Let’s get out of this damp.” He nodded toward the restaurant. Barton looked at it, its darkened windows and its entryway blocked by a waist-high line of yellow police tape. Before she could state the obvious, that it was a crime scene and the tape was a line they shouldn’t cross, Mancini said, “Don’t worry, I’m still head detective.”

  Lifting up the yellow police tape, Mancini let Barton step under it first, then followed her, lowering the tape behind him. He walked to the restaurant’s front door, which was fitted with a latch and padlock and sealed with a single strip of yellow adhesive tape. The latch and padlock were new, department-issue. Barton stayed where she was and watched as Mancini opened the lock with a key, then, with a pocketknife, cut the tape where the door met the frame. He was wearing, she noticed now, leather gloves. Expensive, of course, thick stitches at its seams. They were stretched tight over his large hands. He held the door open for her but she hesitated one more.

  Again, before she could express her obvious concerns about contaminating a crime scene, Mancini said, “It’s okay, we both seem to be wearing our galoshes tonight. Anyway, they’re done.” He took another look around, then nodded toward the open door. He was a stern parent now. “C’mon, Kay, get inside.”

  The interior of the restaurant was an open space—no tables or chairs, nothing here except for signs of an ongoing restoration—ladders, canvases, cans of paint. Unlit, yet not dark, either, not totally.

  Barton moved through the door and into the empty, echoing space, stopped after a few steps. Mancini pulled the door closed behind them, cutting off the rumble and hiss of the canal.

  With the lights off, the row of oversized windows at the far end of the room was the only source of illumination, letting in the bluish white canal light, no brighter than the light from a fish tank. Enough, though, for Barton to see by. She quickly got the layout of the room, determined that the only other way out that she could see—a double door made of panes of glass, located just past the bar to her right and leading to the deck—was chained shut. Her eyes went to the cans of paint in the corner farthest from where she stood. Was one of them full enough, she wondered, to shatter a window, if it came to that?

  “Step to the middle of the room,” Mancini ordered.

  Barton walked, reached what seemed to her the center, and stopped. She turned and faced Mancini. He held back ten feet or so, lingering in what was the darkest half of that room.

  He unbuttoned his overcoat, let it fall open. Barton saw his round gut, saw, too, the handgun holstered to his belt.

  “Take off your jacket,” Mancini said.

  “What for?”

  “Just do it.”

  She could feel the tension in her brow and around her eyes, clear indications that her face had shifted now into a puzzled expression. She looked at Mancini, got the exact sense that he wanted her to get, that he was near the edge of his patience, geared up, from this moment on, for quick decisions and quick decisions only. No bullshit, moment of truth, one thing he didn’t like and he was out the door.

  Barton unzipped the leather jacket, then removed it.

  “Toss it over,” Mancini said.

  She did. He caught it, turned it around as he ran his thick fingers around the inside of the collar and cuffs, then over the pockets. He was, she knew, looking for some kind of recording or listening device. He felt something in one pocket, unzipped it and reached inside, removing Barton’s cell phone. He checked, she assumed, to make sure no active line was open, then returned it to the pocket and dropped the jacket to the floor.

  “Turn around, Kay,” he said flatly.

  She told herself that she had come too far to give up now, had walked too far out on this limb as it was just by making the call she had made before calling Mancini, never mind actually meeting Mancini, and here of all places.

  Mancini walked up behind her, and as he did she felt the shift in the still air caused by his motion. Cold stirred by cold. He was just inches from her, must have taken off his gloves because his bare hands were suddenly on her, touching her shoulders, the back of her neck, her ponytail. She made herself hold steady. His hands then moved down her back and around her waist to her lower stomach, moving finally up to her breasts. She had nothing on beneath her thermal s
hirt, and she felt her nipples harden under his palms. She closed her eyes. Two years without a man’s touch, and now this. There was nothing overtly sexual in the way Mancini groped her, it was strictly a professional pat-down, rough and thorough. Still, it was an unpleasant invasion nonetheless. Once Mancini was certain no device was hidden on her torso, he moved down her legs, one at a time, from top to bottom, lingered in a crouch as he searched through her socks and the rubberized tops of her work boots with his thick fingers.

  When he was done, he stood behind her again, and she knew what was next, braced herself for it.

  His hands moved down her lower back to her ass, then between her legs from behind. He was skimming fast now. Moving up her narrow hips, he dug his fingers into the waistband of her jeans, made a half circle with each hand till his fingers met in the back, then retraced the motion till they met again in front. Finally he moved one hand down and placed it between her legs, searching her from the front. His hand lingered there, his fingers pressing against her pubic bone, and then suddenly it was gone, Mancini was no longer standing behind her. He walked back to where he had been standing. Barton turned and faced him as he picked up her jacket and tossed it back to her. It landed short. She stepped to it, picked it up and put it on.

  “So what is it you think you know,” Mancini said finally.

  “Someone I know thinks that everything that’s happened since last night points to all this being the simple matter of Roffman going after Castello. Roffman took over the investigation of last night’s murders, the only witness to the murders was himself killed, and at the time he was killed only a cop would have known that there was a witness and who the witness was.”

  “Who exactly is this someone?”

  “It’s not important.”