3 Quarters Page 22

  He peered into his rearview mirror and could make out the white monster of a van in pursuit. When the gulls finally dispersed, he looked ahead again, and another white van was ominously there in front of him, like a portable prison wall. Bobby swung the wheel left this time, toward the surf, hoping to get to full speed on the hard-packed sand of the shore. The second van raced toward him, and even in the wet, windy haze Bobby could see that the license plate had been obscured by a black plastic bag.

  Racing for the shoreline, Bobby realized he was now sandwiched between the two huge vans and could not swerve left or right. The only place to go was straight into the riotous sea. He slammed the brakes, the car lurching to a halt in the wet sand. The vans also braked. Bobby quickly shifted into reverse and heard the metallic grinding of sand trapped between the gears. The Jeep strained to climb the incline in reverse, and then he found himself hopelessly mired, the wheels spinning like those of a stationary bicycle.

  The two white vans had him penned in on either side, making it impossible for him to open the side doors. Bobby saw men with black ski masks and zippered NYPD jackets, who had exited the far doors of the white vans, now circle around to the front of his Jeep. The men were animated with boozy machismo. He leaped over the backseat of his Jeep, into the hatchback area, braced himself against the seat, and kicked out the back window with both boots. He heard the roar of the wind and felt the rain on his face as he dove out the back window, hitting the ground in a roll.

  He was on his feet in seconds and instantly con fronted by a hooded, masked man who swung a blackjack at his head. Bobby ducked under the sap and dropped the man with a punch to the solar plexus.

  Bobby began running, racing as fast as he could in the wet sand toward the walkway five hundred feet up ahead. He waited for a bullet to end his run. It didn’t come. Instead, a hand grabbed him from behind and Bobby spun. He saw a black wool ski mask, and he punched at it with a right hand where the nose protruded. He felt bone and cartilage flatten under his knuckles. The man fell in a legless twirl. Now a second ski-masked goon grabbed him from the left, and Bobby threw a punch at this attacker, and he went down on his back with a soft thud. The third and fourth goons approached him from the sides, one hitting Bobby with a police nightstick across the backs of his knees, buckling him and forcing him to a kneeling position. The second one hit him with a blackjack across the right ear. Bobby looked up as his head spun, and he saw six masked faces looming down at him. Rain fell in his eyes from a funereal sky.

  He imagined Maggie standing at his funeral . . . .

  He could see the entire huddle of men over him, wearing NYPD jackets, NYPD rings, NYPD T-shirts, whacking him with blackjacks, kicking him, punching him. The pain jolted through him, as he instinctively tried to protect his face, then his balls, his back, as he was attacked from every angle. He tried to get up. He was stomped back down.

  Then he heard the slide of an automatic pistol being cocked. Some sounds came with an edifying echo, telling you that although the ending was wrong, you had come to it the right way. You are just out of moves, he thought. Out of control. He was almost at peace, held his head high to the falling rain, awaited the bullet and wherever it would deliver him.

  “Wait,” shouted one mask-muffled voice. “I want the last thing he remembers before he dies to be me pissing in his face.”

  Through a prism of rain and blood, Bobby looked up and knew the voice. Kuzak. He could see the big man taking out his big fleshy dick as the others started to laugh. Guys who liked to publicly wave dicks always had small metaphysical balls and even smaller brains, Bobby thought. He saw Kuzak wave his dick in preparation to urinate, and with one last burst of rage, Bobby grasped Kuzak’s dick in his big sandy hand and yanked it like an emergency cord, pulling it down over the iron teeth of the zipper of Kuzak’s jeans. He rotated it like he was coring an apple. Bobby thought that at the very least, Kuzak’s ferocious scream would drown out the report of the gunshot that would be coming right behind it. He felt warm blood gushing out over his clenched fist, mixing with the colder rain. He felt Kuzak pounding on him, his knuckles beating his head.

  “Shoot him!” Kuzak screamed, hyperventilating. He beat Bobby on top of the skull, but couldn’t shake his grip. “Hurry . . . fucking . . . shoot . . . him!”

  Bobby heard the slides of several pistols, and he twisted and wrenched harder, determined to pull Kuzak with him through the jagged doorway into the next dimension. Then he heard a single shot cracking in the gale wind. And didn’t feel a thing.

  Then he heard startled gasps come from the masked cops.

  “Put those fucking guns down,” Bobby heard John Shine scream above the howl of the storm. “And get outta here while you can still fuckin’ walk.”

  The hooded men dropped their pistols to their sides as Bobby saw John Shine step out of the tempest, dressed in a green, hooded slicker, his gun outstretched. His red Land Rover was parked behind him, with the motor running.

  Bobby still held on to Kuzak’s mangled penis, yanking it as the big cop screamed and sagged toward his knees. Bobby pulled down harder, leveraging himself to his feet as Kuzak sank in direct counterweight.

  “Please . . . I . . . beg . . . you . . . please,” Kuzak screamed, unable to fall completely so long as Bobby held on to him.

  Bobby saw that several of the hooded men were flanking John Shine, their guns once again outstretched. A standoff.

  “Let go of him, Bobby,” Shine said.

  Bobby finally let go of Kuzak, who dropped to the ground in a blubbering fetal ball, his hands clutching his bloodied penis. While two masked cops aimed their guns in the standoff with Shine, two others lifted Kuzak under the arms and dragged him across the sand to one of the white vans. The guys with the guns followed the others, walking backward in the rain. Four of the men climbed into the first van, the white doors closed, and it quickly spun away into the tireless rain. The two men with the outstretched pistols got into the second white van and followed the first van.

  Shine lowered his gun and looked at Bobby.

  Bobby brushed himself off as John Shine pushed his pistol into his waistband with a pained grimace. The two old friends stood in the pouring rain. Angry waves crashed onto the shore.

  “Thanks,” Bobby said, unable to summon any other words.

  “They would have killed you, ya know,” Shine said, the rain popping on his rubber rain slicker.

  “I know,” Bobby said, moving toward his Jeep.

  “Come back to the house,” Shine said. “I’ll get you cleaned up, dry clothes, a whiskey.”

  “No,” Bobby said, as he reached the Jeep. “I gotta go. Things to do.”

  “You’re fucking with an army, Bobby,” Shine said as the rain beat down on him. They both climbed into the front seat of the Jeep. Bobby searched in the glove compartment and found his cellular phone.

  “You’re messing with a militia of renegade ex-cops,” Shine said, watching Bobby dial a number. “You’re also being an asshole, challenging them by yourself. Good thing I got a call from Sandy telling me about your confrontation in the bar. Alone. Dumb.’

  “I gotta find her, John,” Bobby said. “I think Barnicle knows what happened to Dorothea. I gotta find out, or I go back to the can.”

  Bobby punched in the remote code to Gleason’s answering machine.

  “It’s one thing to want a throwdown with Barnicle,” Shine said. “But you’re a threat to all these guys, to their families, their homes, car payments, kids’ tuition, their boats, their second homes in the Poconos, their old-age security. Their very futures. You are their grim reaper. That makes you well worth killing, Bobby.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Bobby said, holding up a finger as he listened to a message from Tom Larkin on the answering machine. “TL on the qt here,” Larkin said. “Learned something very important that connects that old kidnap case and the missing architect to the Ukraine business. See me tomorrow after the eight-to-four shift at the Kopper
Kettle diner. Ten four.”

  Bobby’s eyes brightened.

  “Maybe you better tell me what you know,” Shine said.

  “You’re better off not knowing, John,” Bobby said. “It’s just Larkin rooting around in some kidnapping case seventeen years ago. Some current missing-persons case involving an architect. Something to do with the Ukraine. I dunno if it’s anything . . . .”

  “You’re chasing ghosts, Bobby,” Shine said, annoyed, handing him a clean hankie to hold to the gash on his ear. “I tried calling you this morning to warn you that these guys were going to come after you big time. I admire your self-reliance. But you need a real ally. Larkin was a good cop. A great one. In his day. But he’s from another age. Today he’s like a paleontologist digging up old bones that the family dog wouldn’t bring home. Forget Larkin’s wild theories. Let me help you, Bobby.”

  “I don’t want anyone else hurt, John,” Bobby said as he started the Jeep. “But you can give me a hand getting this heap out of the sand.”

  31

  Moira Farrell lit her second cigarette in ten minutes and said, “I tried everything to win you an appeal, Bobby.”

  “Except a declaration of your own incompetence,” Bobby said, still touching a handkerchief to the small gash on his right ear. His clothes were soaked, and he still felt grimy with sand. There was swelling around both eyes, but he had covered his face pretty well during the beating, taking most of the shots to the body and top of the head. Both of which pounded with pain.

  “That’s not very nice,” Farrell said, taking a puff of a new cigarette while her last one smoldered in a large Waterford crystal ashtray. “We just pulled a tough jury, Bobby. It happens.”

  “How much did they pay you to go in the tank on me, Moira?” Bobby asked, guessing that the white pearls that studded the black velvet choker around her long elegant neck were real.

  He was tempted to tell her at once everything he knew about her past but was afraid it would make her retreat into a cocoon. He didn’t want to frighten her into silence. He wanted to taunt her into spilling more information.

  Moira Farrell wore a clinging, sleeveless, black minidress that was fastened by two straps and a single gold clasp at the nape of her neck. She walked from her large teak desk toward Bobby, who stood at her bay window looking at the three downtown bridges. The Manhattan skyline was ghostly with rain, low clouds sitting on the docks and foghorns playing on the sad soundtrack of the city.

  Bobby watched Moira Farrell prancing his way, the dress dead tight around the girlie hips and round behind. Her legs were bare, tanned, and toned, with bunching calves, and she wore expensive black high heels.

  “That’s dangerous talk,” Moira Farrell said, pulling the cigarette from her lips, the filter covered in red lipstick.

  “Danger?” Bobby said, and laughed. “What the hell’s left for me to be afraid of?”

  “Being alone with me,” she said with a coy smile as she walked toward him, past bookcases that lined the burnished teak walls, filled with volumes of law books. Bobby was sure she read Vogue and Cosmo more often than the Law Journal, but she hadn’t come to afford all this because of her tight skirts and loose morals alone. Overall she was a much better lawyer than she had been in front of his jury, that’s for sure.

  “I’ve had worse odds today,” Bobby said.

  She stubbed out the cigarette and walked closer to Bobby, her hair thick and red and glossy, her eyes shimmering blue, her full painted mouth parting, her tongue moistening the lips. She touched the bruises on Bobby’s face with the fingers of her right hand.

  “You really should be more careful, Bobby,” she said, her voice a low purr.

  “Glad at least one of us is looking good,” Bobby said.

  She smiled.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “Really I am. I have a confession to make.”

  “A little late, no?”

  “I always found you so attractive,” Moira Farrell said. “But you were a client, and it would have been unethical. But you’re not my client anymore . . . .”

  She quickly looped her arms around Bobby’s neck and lifted herself up on her toes. He let her press her mouth against his, and then she pushed her tongue into his mouth. It tasted of cigarettes. His hands found their way to her behind, and he grabbed her by the cheeks and she made a low moan. She wore no panties. She felt wonderful and smelled even better. She ground herself against him, and her right hand slid down from his shoulder, over his hard chest, and then searched lower between his legs, where she kneaded him and rubbed him and traced circular patterns with her long coral-painted nails.

  She stepped back and unhooked the neck straps of her dress and let it fall down over her bare breasts, fleshy, firm, and natural. She bucked her hips from side to side as she slithered the rest of the dress over her thighs and let it slink to the floor. She was still wearing her high heels, the pearl-studded choker, a pair of pearl earrings, and a little bit of perfume. She grabbed Bobby by the belt buckle and led him toward one of two dark suede couches that faced each other. She reclined down, naked and ready.

  “Get out of those wet clothes and slip into something more comfortable,” she said with parted legs. “Like me . . .”

  He leaned over her, grabbed a handful of her hair, and pulled her face toward him.

  Go ahead, he thought. Give her a savage fuck. A vengeance fuck. Turn her around, make her face China. Fuck her so hard she’ll need a walker and orthopedic shoes. Fuck being noble. I already said no to Connie. But that was because I cared about her. But this evil bitch helped put me in a fucking cage. Separated me from my daughter. Was part of the crew that snatched Dorothea. Bang the ass off this treacherous cunt, and then after I take her body, slap the shit out of her until she tells me everything else she knows . . . .

  He stopped himself.

  Control, he thought.

  “Tell me about your new client,” Bobby said, peering into her eyes, still grasping her by the hair. She pulled at his belt with eager fingers.

  “Who might that be?” Moira Farrell said, pulling the strap to unbuckle him, kissing and mock-biting the outline of his erection through his snug, damp jeans. Control, he thought again. He wanted her, wanted to hurt her.

  “Gibraltar Security,” Bobby said.

  She paused, only momentarily startled.

  “Nothing underhanded, Bobby,” she said, her hand on his pants’ top button, looking suddenly vulnerable in her nakedness. “Sometimes I represent hero cops hurt in the line of duty. Gibraltar helps me build a case to get their medical pensions.”

  “You mean Lou Barnicle,” Bobby said.

  “It’s business, Bobby,” she said, looking up, kissing him again where it almost made him surrender.

  “He knows how to cut through red tape.”

  “That’s not all he knows how to cut through.”

  Moira Farrell now coaxed Bobby down to her, a determined woman who insisted on having her way. She kissed his mouth again. Then Bobby pulled away, sat on the arm of the couch looking at her face. She writhed naked down his body, kissing his chest, his belly, finally kneeling on the carpeted floor in front of him. She unzipped him with the coral-painted fingers, reached inside his pants, and grabbed him. He jumped. Swallowed hard. She kissed him through his wet underpants, leaving lipstick prints on the wet white cotton.

  “So, Moira, is this how you do most of your fundraising?” Bobby asked.

  She looked up at him, startled.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Moira Farrell said, her grip loosening on Bobby’s erect penis.

  “You are Stone’s main Brooklyn fund-raiser,” Bobby said. “Which means you’re working with your old college roommate, Cis Tuzio. Who just happens to live downstairs from you in the same brownstone. The same way you guys were neighbors back in Scranton. The way you were both such good buddies in the courtroom at my trial. Where neither one of you ever called a certain Carlos Orosco to the stand.”

>   “You’re paranoid, Bobby,” Moira said. “Plenty of defense lawyers and prosecutors are friends outside of court. Relax. Let me take care of you. Help you relax. I’ll do all the work . . . .”

  “I think that’s what you told Cis Tuzio about my defense,” Bobby said. “You told your childhood friend you’d let her get a big win at my expense. What’s the payback, Moira? For dumping my case.”

  “Fuck you, Bobby,” Farrell snapped.

  “I think you already did, Moira,” Bobby said, standing, zipping his pants, looking down at her in the kneeling position. “You fucked me like I was never fucked before.”

  “Get the hell out of here!” she screamed, getting to her feet and strutting across the office. She grabbed her dress, which she held in front of her like a tiny shield, abruptly looking foolish and pathetic and not very attractive at all.

  “So where does all that cash Barnicle brings you go, Moira?” Bobby taunted as he buckled his belt. “The cash in the manila envelopes?”

  “I asked you nicely to go,” Farrell said.

  “A minute ago you wanted me to come,” Bobby said.

  “I could easily scream rape,” she said. “ ‘Disgruntled ex-client gets revenge.’ ”

  Bobby finished buckling his pants.

  “Save that last thought,” he said, and left.

  32

  Bobby left the Court Street office building in downtown Brooklyn through a side door. In the past he had met many attorneys there when they wished to surrender a client to the DA’s office without marching him through the gauntlet of the press. The secret fire exit was behind the newspaper stand, and it let Bobby out on Montague Street, fifty feet down from Court Street. A soft rain continued to fall. Bobby was anxious about leaving through the main doors onto Court Street. His Jeep was parked there. Someone from the Barnicle crew might be watching it.