Holy Terror (7 page)

Conor's limousine hit a park bench and then a small maple and stopped. The driver's-side air-bag
burst out and punched him in the face. But the Brinks-Mat truck continued to career along the footpath until it tilted sideways down the grassy slope that led to the Pond. A mother dragged her two small children out of the way just before the truck launched itself off the sidewalk and hit the water in a massive clatter of spray.

Conor kicked open the limousine's door and hobbled down the slope, shouting, ‘Police! Clear this area as fast as you can!'

He reached the water's edge. Up on Central Park South sirens were already wailing and red lights were flashing; and the police helicopter that had been hovering over them outside Spurr's suddenly reappeared, swooping low around Bergdorf Goodman.

The passenger door of the Brinks-Mat truck slid open. The Angel Gabriel appeared, holding up his Uzi by the barrel. Conor pointed the .44 at him double-handed and barked, ‘Wade over here! Keep that weapon where I can see it! Bring it to the bank, then drop it like it's red hot!'

The Angel Gabriel climbed down from the truck until he was waist deep in water. He began to wade toward the edge of the Pond. Then Doris appeared, looking pale and shaken. Conor's relief was almost overwhelming.

‘Doris? Are you OK? He didn't hurt you, did he?'

‘I'm fine,' said Doris. ‘But young Mr Bussman – he's hit his head. You'd better call for an ambulance.'

The Angel Gabriel heaved himself out of the Pond with water gushing from his pants. He laid the Uzi
down on the asphalt and then – without being told to – spread himself face down on the grass. By now eight or nine police officers were running down the slope toward them, including Sergeant Wexler and Lieutenant Slyman. Two of them waded into the water to help Doris; a third went to see what he could do for Darrell.

Holding the butt between finger and thumb, Conor fastidiously laid the .44 on the ground next to the Uzi. Then he lay face down, too. He didn't want to give any trigger-happy officer the slightest excuse to open fire.

The Angel Gabriel looked at him through the blades of sunburned grass. ‘You're a persistent bastard, aren't you? I should've known you wouldn't let me get away with it.'

‘It's my job. It's only a job, but it's my job.'

Two officers yanked the Angel Gabriel's arms behind his back and handcuffed him. Lieutenant Slyman came up to Conor, casting a shadow across his face. Conor didn't look up but he recognized him by his Cerruti aftershave and his immaculately polished brogues.

‘Well, well,' said Lieutenant Slyman. ‘You've certainly done some spectacular damage today. How much do you reckon they cost, those stretch limos? Fifty K? More?'

He held out his hand to help Conor onto his feet. Conor ignored it. He stood up and brushed himself down and then said, ‘I'll write you out a full statement, lieutenant, if it helps.'

Lieutenant Slyman shook his head in mock admiration. He was a thin man, with a very narrow head.
He had black slashed-back hair and bulbous but hooded eyes. His mouth was red lipped and bow shaped, almost like a woman's.

‘Still the knight in shining armor, aren't you, O'Neil? One man struggling alone against the forces of darkness. You'll be even more of a hero after this.'

Sergeant Wexler was scarlet and sweating. ‘What's this hero shit? He stuck a gun in my goddamned gut.'

‘Oh, get real, sergeant. He apprehended an armed felon without killing any civilians and he recovered the very valuable property he was paid to protect. Nobody's going to make a fuss about a few wrecked vehicles.'

‘He took me hostage, for Christ's sake.'

‘He took steps to prevent you from making even more of an asshole of yourself than you already are. You were supposed to go in there to contain the situation, not re-enact the Battle of Antietam.'

Two paramedics had managed to lift Darrell out of the Brinks-Mat truck and were wheeling him on a gurney up to their waiting ambulance. He had suffered a deep gash on his forehead and his eyes were closed. His head was held in a bright red neck-brace and his nose and mouth were covered by an oxygen mask.

‘How is he?' asked Conor.

One of the paramedics shrugged. ‘Hard to tell with a head injury like this. Could be nothing more than a minor concussion. Could be a fracture.'

‘Take him to Roosevelt-St Luke's. They have an emergency room there, don't they? His uncle owns most of Spurr's Fifth Avenue. I'll have somebody
call and work out the insurance details later.'

He watched as they wheeled Darrell away. Lieutenant Slyman came up and stood next to him and said, ‘Answer me one thing, O'Neil. How could you be sure that guy wasn't going to shoot the hostage?'

‘I wasn't. But you get a feeling about people, you know? You can always tell when somebody is really capable of killing, and when they're not. You can
smell
it.'

Lieutenant Slyman laid a long-fingered hand on his shoulder. ‘I'll look forward to your report,' he said.

Before he went home he visited Salvatore's wife, Maria. The Morales lived in a second-story apartment on 104th Street, up in El Barrio, with window-boxes crammed with geraniums. The windows were wide open because of the heat and he could hear samba music and somebody laughing. He had been half hoping that Maria would have been watching television and would already know what had happened.

He paid off his cab and climbed the steps to the front door. A small boy with a runny nose was sitting against the railings, staging a fight between two identical Batman dolls. Conor recognized him from the photo on Salvatore's desk.

‘Who's winning?' asked Conor, hunkering down beside him.

The boy stared at him as if he were a mental defective. ‘Batman,' he said.

‘I see. Ask a stupid question.'

The boy took pity on him. ‘This Batman is good and this Batman is bad. The bad Batman is winning.'

Conor said, ‘Maybe I should help the good
Batman, huh?' He reached into his coat pocket with his left hand. He kept it there for a moment, and then he brought it out again and popped his fingers, right in front of the bad Batman's face. A puff of smoke blew out of his fingertips, and Conor said, ‘
Bang!
Got you!'

The boy stared at him in amazement. ‘How did you
do
that? That's so cool! Wait till I tell my dad!'

Conor stood up and scruffed the boy's hair. ‘Sure,' he said, sadly.

He pressed the doorbell marked
S. Morales
, then stepped back. Maria Morales leaned out of her living-room window, a dark curly-haired woman in a bright red blouse, with a glittery rhinestone crucifix around her neck.

‘Mr O'Neil? What are you doing here?'

He didn't reply. She hesitated for a moment and then she said tensely, ‘
Wait
.'

She came flying down the stairs with bare feet. He could see her red blouse through the frosted glass. She opened the door and there was a stricken look on her face.

‘What's happened? Where's Sal?'

‘Maria, I think we'd better go inside.'

‘Is he hurt? Tell me! Is he in hospital?'

Conor took hold of both of her hands. He felt as if somebody had wedged an apple down his throat. ‘I'm sorry, Maria. There was a robbery. He couldn't have known what hit him.'

Tears started to flow down Maria's cheeks and the boy on the step stopped playing with his Batman figures and stared at his mother in sympathetic awe.

* * *

He didn't arrive home until well after ten o'clock. He went straight to the icebox and took out a Bud. He pressed the freezing cold can against his forehead as if he wanted to numb his brain. Lacey stood beside him and didn't say anything.

After a while he opened the can, drank a mouthful, and looked at her.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said, touching his cheek.

‘He's dead. There's nothing anybody can do to bring him back. I just feel so bad about him. He resented me so much but he was always so polite.'

‘How was Maria?'

‘How do you think? Her sister came around, and she'll get a lot of help from the neighbors. But God … she has four school-age kids to take care of.'

He dragged out one of the yellow-painted kitchen chairs and sat down. The whole apartment smelled of fresh varnish and paint and she was still wearing her blue OshKosh dungarees with the yellow and white splashes on them. Since they had moved up to East 50th Street, five months ago, she had been turning a collection of stuffy, brownish 1950s rooms into a Swedish country cottage – with stenciled walls and bare sanded floorboards and decorative tiles.

‘I saw you on TV,' she said. ‘What you did… that was so brave. It was
amazing
.'

He shook his head. ‘No it wasn't. It was arrogant. I should have let Slyman handle it.'

‘But you caught the thief, didn't you? You got all of those safety deposit boxes back.'

‘Oh sure. And Sal's in the morgue with a ticket on his toe.'

She stood close to him, one hand held out as if she wanted to touch him, but couldn't. She couldn't share what he was feeling, no matter how much she wanted to. He looked up at her and gave her a quick, wry smile.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. It's just beginning to hit me, is all'

‘You must be exhausted. Do you want anything to eat?'

‘Maybe later. It's so damned hot. Is that air conditioning still on the fritz?'

‘The air-conditioning guy was supposed to call but his wife went into labor.'

Conor swallowed more beer. ‘I thought when I took this job at Spurr's … well, I didn't think that I'd be visiting other men's widows any more.'

She sat beside him and ran her fingers through his thick black hair. ‘Two gray ones,' she said, plucking them out. ‘Maybe you should try something different.'

‘Oh, yes? Like what? What else am I good for?'

‘You could be a magician. Look at that David Copperfield. He makes a fortune.'

‘I can just see two thousand people flocking to Carnegie Hall to see an ex-detective produce hard-cooked eggs out of his ears.'

She took hold of his chin and turned his face sideways until he was looking directly into her cornflower-blue eyes. ‘Think about it. It could have been you that was shot today. Then it would have been Salvatore coming to tell me that I was a widow, and I'm not even married yet.'

‘You always said you wanted to be a free spirit.'

‘If it's a choice between losing you and keeping you, I'd rather not be free at all.'

‘Well, that's just as well. We Irishmen expect our women to cook all of our meals and wash our shirts and blacklead our stoves, at the same time as bearing us twenty-three children and holding down a job at Grand Central Station, sweeping out the trains, to keep us in beer money. You won't have the
time
to be free.'

She was silent, stroking his hair. After a while he said, ‘What?'

‘I don't think this is the right moment to tell you.'

‘Tell me, for Christ's sake. Don't keep me in suspense.'

‘Well, I had a call today. I
could
get a job.'

He stared at her. ‘Meaning?'

‘Meaning nothing at all. Except that I
could
get a job.'

‘A good job, you're talking about, like you had before? A full-time, well-paid job?'

She nodded. ‘Frank Rossi wants me for a new late-night discussion show.'

‘So you're going to take it?'

‘I don't know. I wanted to discuss it with you first.'

‘Why do you have to discuss it with me? It sounds like a wonderful offer. Take it.'

‘It's just that if I
did
take it… well, you wouldn't have to work at that security job any more. You'd have time to look around for something that wasn't so dangerous.'

‘Lisbeth, I used to be a police detective. As far as I'm concerned, this job doesn't even register on the Richter Scale as mildly risky.'

‘How can you say that, when you could have been killed today?'

‘A 747 could have fallen on my head, whether I was chief of security at Spurr's Fifth Avenue or not.'

‘That's ridiculous. I could have been sitting here on my own this evening. And every other evening to come.'

Conor kissed her. ‘Do you know what my grandfather used to say? He said that when a woman comes to live with a man, she brings two suitcases with her. One suitcase filled with pretty underwear and another suitcase filled with chains.'

Lacey went to change while Conor finished his beer. He glanced toward the bedroom door and he could see her reflection in the mirror. After his experience with Paula, he still found it extraordinary that he could love a woman so much. But he loved everything about her, right down to the way she scolded him for eating hamburgers, and the way she sang shrill, wildly off-key songs when she was decorating. Bob Seger would have wept to hear her sing ‘Hollywood Nights'.

Her real name was Lisbeth Johannsen. She was very tall, with shoulders like a swimmer. She had blond flyaway hair, high Nordic cheekbones and a tip-tilted nose. Conor always said that she had pink satin pillows instead of lips.

She had started her working life as a researcher for NBC, eventually graduating to television reporter and then to early-evening anchor. But her career was mortally wounded by a disastrous two-and-a-half-year relationship with Larry Elgar, a failed producer
who drank Stolichnaya for breakfast and regularly beat her. She couldn't turn up to present the six o'clock news with two black eyes and a plaster over the bridge of her nose, so she was forced to quit. Eventually, however, a gay friend called Sebastian Speed found her a part-time job at
American Interior
magazine, producing photographic features on elegant people's elegant homes.