“You must watch a lot of television.”
“Not as much as you think.” Klein held up a finger to emphasize his point. “But this moment, right here, is one of those clichés from the cheesiest kind of procedurals.”
Morrigan tightened the grip on his gun. “And what turn would that be, exactly?”
Klein smiled again. “When the bad guy tells you his plan,” he said.
Morrigan laughed. He couldn’t think of any other way to react. “And why the hell would you do something as utterly asinine as that?” he said, glancing at the raven-haired man—his lethal eyes still focused squarely on Morrigan.
Klein shrugged. “Because you’re working for us now. Otherwise, we’ll urge our witness who’s been speaking to internal affairs to hand over a certain piece of incriminating evidence that will have you pulling a twenty-year stretch in Rikers for the death of one Damian Huerta.”
Morrigan reached a hand to the knot forming in the pit of his stomach, his palm clutching onto the pistol now slick with cold sweat. “I didn’t—” he nearly stammered, “Huerta was—”
“Enough, Morrigan,” Klein said, holding up a hand and squinting his displeasure. “I know everything. I don’t need to repeat myself.”
Morrigan’s mouth opened in protest.
“You,” Klein cut in, “took twenty large to pop off a few rounds in Damian Huerta and gave five of it to your partner to make it look like the guy pulled a knife on you. This is fact. This isn’t some conspiracy my people are cooking up to bait you. You dug yourself into this hole—we’re just taking advantage of it.”
Morrigan felt like someone had a hand around his throat as his brow began to accumulate thick beads of sweat that he batted at with the back of his hand. “How,” he said, “how the hell did you—”
“Can you admit it?” Klein cut in again. “Here and now. Can you admit to me that you murdered Damian Huerta?”
Morrigan took a long breath before answering. He knew that Klein wasn’t working for IAD. They didn’t make plays like this. No, this guy Klein was for real, and even though Morrigan wouldn’t give the prick the satisfaction of saying it out loud—the look in his eyes confirmed everything.
All Klein did in reply was smile.
“You’re a dirty cop, Morrigan,” Klein said. “You may have only pulled the hired gun with a badge stunt just once, but you’re still dirty.”
Morrigan said nothing. What can I say? he thought. He’s right…
After clearing his throat and lighting a ‘fuck it’ cigarette, Morrigan settled into the booth, shook his head, and blew smoke through his nose. “What do you want from me?” he asked, a defeated timbre in his voice.
“It’s simple,” Klein said. “Think of it like crossing off two items on a list.”
“What’s item one?”
“The passports. I want them. Do what you have to do to get them.”
“What are they for?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
Morrigan tilted his head. “I thought you said I was getting a peek behind the curtain.”
Klein settled back and nodded. “I did,” he said. “Didn’t I?”
Morrigan took a drag of his cigarette. “It’ll be a bitch to get them from evidence.”
“I don’t care. Do what you have to do.”
Morrigan ashed on the table. “What’s item two?”
“You’re going to tie off the investigation to the murders of Mrs. Ruiz, Hector Zimmerman and Dalton. The whole case. I want you to shut it down.”
“‘Shut it down?’” Morrigan laughed. “What kind of pull do you think I have?”
“Enough to do what needs to be done,” Klein said. “And I think, considering the circumstances, that a man who’s in as tight a spot as you are right now will do anything to make sure he avoids being locked up with guys he’s busted in the past.”
Morrigan said nothing.
Klein pointed to the raven-haired man. “This is my friend,” he said.
Morrigan grunted. “What’s his name?”
“This is Alex Petrovic,” Klein said. “He is going to be your shadow for a few days. You won’t see him but he sure as hell will see you. He’s going to make sure that you follow through with the two items on your list.”
Morrigan sighed and took another long puff. Ash peppered his shirt, though he was too preoccupied to notice.
“We want the passports by tomorrow night,” Klein said. “10:30pm. Twenty-four hours. Once you have them, go to your apartment and draw the window shades. That’ll be the signal.” He nodded to Petrovic. “Alex will then collect the passports from you in the hallway outside your apartment. After that, you will receive the occasional call on your phone to check in on the status of the investigation. Don’t worry about giving us your number. We already have it.”
“How long do I have to shut it down?” Morrigan asked.
“Three days,” Klein said. “But no more than that.”
The proverbial rug felt like it had been pulled from under Morrigan’s feet. His brain was firing in a million different directions at once. “How,” he said. “Why?”
“Why what?” Klein asked.
“All of it—Hector Zimmerman, Jake Dalton, Mrs. Ruiz. You killed them all? You were responsible for it?”
Klein waved his hand in a fifty-fifty motion. “More like people I know did it,” he said. “Not me directly.”
“Why?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Was it the Irishmen that Maisano was making the passports for? Were they the three guys in the Halloween masks that killed Zimmerman?”
Klein did not reply and continued to sip his coffee.
Morrigan slammed his fist on the table and tossed his butt in Klein’s mug where it quickly sizzled out. “This is horseshit!”
Klein said, “It is for you, but not for us. You’re our lap dog, we’re your master. You do this job and do it right and the witness for the IAD in connection to the Huerta shooting will disappear.” He snapped his fingers, “Just like that.”
Morrigan drew a breath and settled into his new reality. “Just like that?” he said.
A confirming nod from Klein. “Just. Like. That.”
Morrigan took another deep breath.
“Anything else, John?” Klein asked, slightly perturbed, as if Morrigan was overstaying his welcome.
“No,” Morrigan said with a croak in his throat.
Klein titled down his hand. “Okay then,” he said. “You can go. We’ll be in touch.”
Morrigan slowly stood, unaware that he was overtly clutching onto a gun as he left the booth, passed the cook—staring on in wide-eyed horror—and left the restaurant.
Morrigan piled into his car, his whole body vibrating and the temples of his skull throbbing. Life for him had changed. Everything was now upside down and back to front. He looked in the mirror and saw himself and the sins known as Damian Huerta staring right back at him.
17
Rat Trap
Forty minutes later
Morrigan drove aimlessly around the city streets, lost and confused, trying to find a way out of the rat trap he was in. He almost felt as if he had been given some kind of terminal medical diagnosis. His mind was no longer in detective mode. It was switching over to his more primal instincts and urges geared toward self-preservation.
They had him by the short and curlies with Damian Huerta. There was no avoiding the fact. Morrigan had fallen on the wrong side of the thin blue line, and finally felt the push once he was offered the chance to grease Damian Huerta for a nice payout. Huerta was a low-life anyway. A scumbag who had murdered three innocent people in a botched armed robbery and had managed to avoid a conviction for some fucked-up legal reason that Morrigan could never understand. But after he had killed Huerta and stashed the cash, Morrigan could no longer bring himself to loan out his badge to the highest bidder again, despite countless offers. From then on he kept far away and clear from the cops who dab
bled in the illicit.
But it didn’t matter anymore.
There’s no such thing as walking away clean, he thought.
Eventually he made it back to the station. He wasn’t on shift, but he couldn’t bring himself to face Tommy back at the apartment. The hypocrisy of it all made Morrigan’s stomach do a somersault.
He meandered into the station a few minutes before midnight, the general hustle-and-bustle of the precinct having somewhat died down as the night shift took over, but Bukowski, a day player well past her clocking-out point, was still in the tech lab going over tidbits of information pertaining to Jake Dalton’s homicide.
“Nothing?” she said as Morrigan walked into the middle of the conversation. “You didn’t find anything?”
Miller shook his head. “The equipment was clean. I was just forwarding the findings to Captain Edmunds.”
Morrigan leaned in the doorway, forcing a smile and acting like he had blown off steam. “I take it that you didn’t find a hit on the SWAT team’s stuff.”
Bukowski turned around and waited a moment before shaking her head. “Nothing,” she said, still a little perturbed at Morrigan’s sudden exit during their botched sting a few hours earlier. “We’re double-checking our findings but it looks like they’re in the clear.”
“Good,” Morrigan said. “Keep me in the loop.”
Bukowski huffed and nodded toward the hallway. “Talk to you a minute?”
Morrigan stuffed his hands inside his jacket pocket, his chin down and eyes glassed over as Bukowski followed him and shut the door behind her.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“As in?”
“Cut the cue-card rhetoric and talk to me.” She motioned to the door. “You called off that sting only three minutes after the magic hour hit.”
“You saying I should have given it more time?”
Bukowski took a step forward. “I’m saying that you must have got a call or something that made you pull the plug. You went silent on the radio for a good twenty seconds.”
Morrigan puffed his chest, his badge catching the light.
Bukowski saw what was coming, laughed, and wagged her finger. “Don’t you start pulling rank on me.”
“I might,” he said.
She got in close, the tips of their noses a breath from touching. “I know you, John. You’re not some paper-pushing geriatric over at the plaza. You’re a team player. You always have been.”
Morrigan, for a brief moment, felt comforted at her words. He found a moment of reprieve even as he was recognizing that he was just as soiled as the people he locked away.
Bukowski eased up and got out of his face, crossing her arms while she traced her jawline with her thumb. “Your guard is up,” she said, pacing to the right of Morrigan. “Something’s going on with you.”
“Nothing is up,” Morrigan said, perking up and still trying to play it cool and easy. “I’m just tired. I’ve been tag-teaming this thing with you; my brother is in town…” He held his words, a little bit elated when he realized he had stumbled across the perfect scapegoat. “And,” he continued, “IAD is looking into me.”
Bukowski paused, somewhat relieved when Morrigan dropped the IAD bit. “Are you serious?” she said. “What for?”
A sigh. “Hell if I know. They’re going after me from something way back when I was on the other side of town. The shooting team cleared me. These guys from the rat squad are just trying to make it look like they’re being diligent.”
Bukowski sifted through the current political state of the department and thought of who and why up at the top would want to throw Morrigan under the bus. “Jesus,” she said, shaking her head—both at herself and Morrigan’s predicament. “I’m sorry. I… I had no idea.”
If only she knew the truth though, Morrigan couldn’t help but think. “I just need to keep my head down,” he said. “If we close this case, that may help.”
Bukowski uncrossed her arms and took on a more poised and relaxed expression. “Okay,” she said. “What are you thinking?”
“Knocking on William Thompson’s door again for starters.”
“Want me to go with you?”
Morrigan was already moving down the hall toward the exit. “No, I can handle it. Just stay on the evidence and call me when something hits.”
A nod. “You got it.”
Morrigan bade her goodbye with some kind of half salute as he snaked his way through the bullpen and left the building.
Bukowski couldn’t help but watch him leave. She felt her mind put at ease when he told her about the internal affairs investigation. Any cop feeling the heat of their scrutiny always had a tough time keeping their composure when they started digging.
But something still didn’t sit right with her. It was like Morrigan was telling her only eighty percent of the story. She had grilled enough people in an interrogation room to know when someone wasn’t being forthright.
And Bukowski was positive that Lieutenant John Morrigan, friend and fellow member of the NYPD fraternity, was not being forthright.
18
Sliver
Saturday, January 12th
Long Island
It was 12:47am when Morrigan rolled up to William Thompson’s residence on Long Island. He knew it was a late hour to come calling, but the adrenaline in Morrigan’s system still had him up and moving. He knew that he needed to shut down the investigation, but he needed some kind of justification, or at the very least a way to steer attention away from Anthony Klein—and whoever he was answering to. He figured there was a slight chance that he could stir something up with Thompson. As long a shot as it was.
He raised his fist and knocked three times on the door.
He waited ten seconds.
No answer.
Morrigan pressed his face close to the window in the door and cupped a hand. The only illumination from inside came from the dull glow of a table lamp in the hallway.
Morrigan knocked again.
Still no answer.
He moved from the porch and made his way to the back door, knocking three times again but ending up with the same result he had out front—nothing.
Morrigan tilted up his chin, sniffing the night air as his breath fogged and rose up in a cloud of vapor—something was wrong. Something smelled… off.
He jiggled the handle on the back door, scanning over his left and right shoulder for any signs of a neighbor being stirred from their slumber. He took a step back and then kicked in the back door.
Screw it, Morrigan thought.
He moved inside, pulling his piece and holding it with a tight grip close to his chest as he cleared the kitchen. The air was stale. Everything inside felt foul—and there was a lingering stench coming from the area of the back bedroom down the hallway to Morrigan’s right.
He stepped through the hallway, one foot over the other, light steps, creeping, following the source of the smell that grew in intensity the further he walked the hallway, before amassing into an overbearing stench that Morrigan knew full well from his years of detective work to be the putrid odor of human decay.
Positioning himself outside the last hall door on the left, he pushed it open with his foot and entered to find the remains of William Thompson face down on his bed, his body bloated and gray, and a pool of blood caked and dried around his head.
Morrigan holstered his weapon. “Fuckin’ Christ…”
Moving around the body, he watched where he planted his steps before coming to the foot of the bed and shaking his head. He pulled out his cell, ready to call it in… but then his fingers froze before he could dial.
I can’t call it in, Morrigan remembered the instructions that Klein had given him. This will only make things worse.
Morrigan pondered, thoughts of Damian Huerta’s murder creeping up behind him and the IAD pricks who were trying to nail him to the wall.
Shit, he thought. I have to call him.
But he didn’t have Klein’s nu
mber. Klein said that he would get a hold of Morrigan when the time was right.
Fuck.
What do I do?
And then Morrigan recalled Klein’s comments back at the restaurant earlier when he gestured to Petrovic as being Morrigan’s new “shadow.”
Could it be…?
Morrigan turned to the window with the chemise curtain drawn over it to his left. He slipped his finger in the opening, pulled it apart just a sliver, and spotted a Mustang with tinted windows across the street.
Petrovic.
Morrigan took a moment and tapped his finger. He then held up his cell phone to the window, pointed to it, and shook it.
“Call me,” Morrigan mouthed before stepping away from the window.
Five seconds passed.
Ten.
Waiting with his hands on his hips as he stared at the corpse on the bed.
Morrigan’s cell phone rang. “Yeah,” he answered.
“What is it?” the voice of Klein inquired wearily from the other side.
Morrigan nodded to the body like Klein was in the room with him. “I’ve got a dead body.”
A laugh from Klein.
“Did you kill him, Klein? Did you?”
“I don’t get my hands dirty.” Morrigan could hear Klein taking a sip of some kind of beverage on the other side. “Bigger and badder guys get paid for that sort of thing. Who is he, anyway?”
Morrigan gritted his teeth. “William Thompson. That name ring a bell?”
“Oh, yeah… is he dead?” Klein replied.
Morrigan batted away the stench of Thompson’s decaying corpse as he tried to speak. “Very much so.”
“Well, he must have interfered with something he shouldn’t have. Or he was a loose end. Tough to say.”
The Dark Path Page 10