Hurt Machine (22 page)

“I’ll be up there late tonight, okay? There’s some stuff I need to handle down here first.”

“You’re coming?”

“Did I give the wrong answer?”

“It’s just that—are you done with what you were working on?”

“No,” I said. “Whatever I leave behind for two days, will be here when I get back. Anyway, I’ll be able to check on the wedding arrangements and see Sarah when I’m up there.”

“I know it’s crazy, but when I saw you holding Carmella in your arms, I thought I was losing you.”

You probably are, but not to Carmella.
“Don’t be silly. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Bye.”

“Pam,” I stopped her from hanging up, “don’t wear too much to bed.”

I felt the smile on my face before I realized I was happy at the idea of being with her. It might not have been mad love between us, but whatever it was, was good and I didn’t want to piss it away the way I had so many other good things before it.

As soon as I put the phone down, it rang again.

“Good afternoon, Moses. Harper Pettibone here.”

“Hey, Harper. This is unexpectedly quick.”

“Well, you seemed anxious to learn whatever you could and it so happened I played squash this morning with Deputy Mayor Rosenberg.”

“Who won?” I asked, but not to be polite. Harper didn’t like to lose, so he made sure not to.

“Still busting my chops. You haven’t changed, Moe, have you?”

“More than you could know.”

“He gave me a few good games, did the deputy mayor, but in the end …”

“I’m hoping you didn’t call to talk squash.”

“I managed to work the circumstances of Robert Tillman’s unfortunate demise into our locker room chat.”

“I bet that gave him
agita
.”

“On the contrary, Moe, Max Rosenberg looked like the cat who’d eaten the proverbial canary, cage and all. When I pressed him on it, he said, and I quote, ‘It’s futile fishing for that particular payday, old man. Not only is it unbecoming of you, but that’s one wrongful death suit this city will never have to worry about.’”

“That’s crazy, Harper. How can he be so sure?”

“
That
he wasn’t willing to discuss, but he wasn’t whistling through the graveyard. I can assure you of that. I play cards with the deputy mayor as well and he isn’t much of a poker player. He couldn’t bluff his way out of a paper sack.”

“Would you care to speculate?”

“I never care to speculate, but I will. Either someone’s already gotten to the relatives and paid them off to go quietly into that good night or the city is holding a trump card. My guess is it’s the latter.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“You can never be sure you’ve gotten to all the relatives who might have a claim. It’s like that whack-a-mole game. Just when you pay one relative off and get a signed waiver, another one pops up. No, the city’s holding some ammunition in abeyance and for the deputy mayor to speak with such bravado, it must be pretty potent stuff.”

“Thanks, Harper. I really appreciate it.”

“I’ll keep checking with my other sources. Rosenberg was so annoyingly smug, I’m tempted to go find one of Tillman’s relatives myself.”

“If you hear anything else, I’ll be reachable by cell. I’m going up to Vermont for a few days.”

“Enjoy yourself. You looked like you could use the rest.”

He was right.

This time, something else rang when I hung up the phone. It was the building intercom.

“Hello.”

“Yeah, boss, it’s me, Brian.”

“Doyle! What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk and not over the phone.”

“Come on up.” I buzzed him in.

Brian Doyle didn’t look quite the same as he had when I’d seen him at O’Hearns—the difference being his blackened right eye and the nasty, finger-shaped bruises on his neck. And seeing him, I knew why he was here.

“Have a run-in with the Jorge Delgado Fan Club? Took more than one fireman to do that to you,” I said. “How many?”

“Three.”

“Where?”

“Outside a bar by Delgado’s old firehouse.”

“How’d the three of them fare?”

“Two of ’em are at the dentist today, the other one’s getting his nose reset.”

“Glad to hear you haven’t lost your touch, Brian.”

He smiled at that, but the smile quickly vanished. “I’m off the case, Boss. Emotions are running way too high on this one. Those guys were spoiling for the fight even before I walked in there. Someone’s been in those guys’ ears whipping ’em up. It was like they were waiting for me or anyone to walk in there and start asking questions.”

“Sorry, Brian. I owe you for this.”

“No, you don’t.”

“If you say so.”

“Boss, I never tell you what to do, but leave this thing alone for now. I know you can usually handle yourself, but if you had walked into that bar … Listen, they’re burying the guy tomorrow. In a few weeks, who knows, maybe you can start asking some questions again. For now, it’s too dangerous. You should enjoy yourself. Enjoy Sarah’s wedding. You shouldn’t be doing this stuff.”

I held out my hand to him. “Thanks, Brian.”

He ignored my hand and hugged me instead. “Thanks for everything, Boss.”

“I’m not dying yet, you asshole,” I said, playfully pushing him away.

He winked with his good eye. “Just figured I’d get it out of the way now … just in case.”

“Fuck you, Doyle.”

“Yeah, I love you too. Take care of yourself.”

With that, Brian was gone. As I walked around the house, packing for my trip, his words, though only half-serious, rang in my head. “… just in case.” We both knew in case of what.

THIRTY-FOUR

I headed west along the Belt Parkway, toward Manhattan, and into the setting sun. I had made this drive so many times in my life that but for the other cars on the road, I could do it blindfolded. I knew every bump, rut, and pothole, every twist and turn. Sometimes I liked to think this was all so familiar to me that I could name the individual blades of grass at the roadside and knew which rivets were the rusty ones on the east-facing façade of the Verrazano Bridge. That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? You never know anything or anyone as well as you think you do, least of all yourself. It is the great folly of humanity, the search for self-knowledge and significance. It’s why we’re all so fucking miserable. Oh, I thought, to be an ant or a cat or almost anything else that doesn’t lose sleep over dying. Does an ant ever ask itself where do I come from, where am I going, or what does it mean?

I knew some stuff about myself. I knew I’d never been very good at just letting go, even for a little while. That’s why I decided to stop at Kid Charlemagne’s on my way up to Vermont. Although the East Village wasn’t necessarily on the way to Vermont, it wasn’t exactly not on the way either. Let’s just say there’s no direct route from Sheepshead Bay to Brattleboro, so it was going to take me five or six hours no matter how I chose to go. I’d thrown my duffel bag in the trunk, conveniently neglecting to pack the bottles of red wine I usually brought up to Pam’s with me. I’d have to tell her about my condition soon enough, but I wanted to do it on my terms. Pam was a damn good PI and I think she was already a little suspicious of my health. I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened to me the other night at Carmella’s.

Rush hour was at an end and the traffic was pretty thin as I headed around the bend from Bath Beach to Bay Ridge, the Verrazano Bridge looming up before me. It was hard for me to remember when I was a kid and the bridge wasn’t there, when you used to have to ferry across from Brooklyn to Staten Island and the lost world of New Jersey beyond. The bridge opened to traffic in ’64, like Shea Stadium and the World’s Fair. Now, with the fair long closed and Shea turned into a parking lot for Citi Field, only the bridge remained.

I don’t know what it was that drew my attention to the old ’75 Buick Electra in the right-hand lane. Maybe it was its darkly tinted windows or the fact that the sun’s glare off its windshield made it impossible for me to see the driver’s face. Maybe it was the sparseness of the traffic and the fact that the Buick seemed to be hanging back and to my right, but keeping its distance constant. I shook my head at my paranoia. I think if Brian Doyle hadn’t shown up on my doorstep with that black eye and sounding the retreat, I would never have noticed the Buick at all. So to test out my paranoia, I floored the gas pedal and shot under the bridge. When I looked in my passenger side mirror, the Buick was gone. Problem was, I looked in the wrong mirror.

Bang!
The tail of my car jerked and fishtailed, but I held it steady. There was the Electra again, this time in my sideview and only a foot or two off my left fender. Before I could react, it closed in, ramming the left side of my back bumper. This time the hit was much harder, but he’d lost the element of surprise. Surprise or no surprise, it took all my police training and years of driving savvy to keep my car steady. I couldn’t be sure whether the guy driving the Buick was a pro just trying to scare me—mission accomplished—or if he was an amateur trying to kill me who didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. I’d have to worry about that later, because amateur or not, a few more hits like the last one and I wouldn’t be able to keep my car on the road. It was time to play offense.

I put my foot to the floor again and my car zoomed forward. I knew the Buick probably had a huge old V8 under its hood and that it would quickly catch up. I was counting on it. While the Electra was built for straight line speed, weighed as much as an Abrams tank, and was great for ramming smaller cars off the road, it maneuvered like an ocean liner. I saw the Buick coming up fast as we both approached the point where the Belt Parkway curves right and up onto the Gowanus Expressway. I had one chance and it was now. Just when the Electra got within a car’s length of me, I stepped hard on my brakes and yanked my steering wheel hard left.

Bang!
I caught him pretty close to where I was aiming, the rear passenger tire. I’m not sure how close exactly, but close enough. The old Buick spun out in front of me and flipped over as I passed. I counted it flipping over twice more in my rearview mirror before it came to rest against a guardrail. It didn’t burst into flames. Cars don’t do that as frequently as in the movies, but I couldn’t imagine the driver would walk out of that wreck unscathed. I exhaled for the first time in minutes. I shouldn’t have.

My left front tire exploded. That much, I remember.

When I came to, a cop was gently shaking my shoulder and I noticed my car, which had been in the left lane and facing Manhattan when my tire blew, was now up against the opposite guardrail and facing traffic. My side airbags had deployed. I also noticed that I had a hell of a headache and that my neck hurt like a son of a bitch. There were flashing lights everywhere I looked and the wailing sound of a siren in the distance.

“Did I hit anybody else?” I mumbled, trying to work the pain out of my neck.

“Nah. You slid across all the lanes, but everyone avoided you. You all right? There’s some EMTs on the way.”

“I’m okay. A little sore.”

He asked for my name, asked me the day and date, asked if I’d been drinking, held some fingers up in front of my eyes, and did some eye tracking thing with a pen. When he was done, I made to get out of the car.

“Wow, pal, you better wait there till the paramedics clear you.”

I stayed put. “I used to be on the job,” I said to the cop. “Used to work the Six-O.”

“Long time ago, huh?”

“Long time, yeah.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“Front left tire blew and I lost it. Busy night?”

“You know it. Must be a full moon coming tonight. There’s a car flipped over on the Belt about a mile back.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“If there was, they didn’t hang around. It was a stolen car. Amazing.”

“How’s that?”

“It was an old beat-up piece of shit. Who the fuck’s gonna steal something like that?”

Somebody who wants to run another car off the road.
“Listen, Rafferty,” I said, reading his name badge. “Do me a favor and take some pictures of my car. I was supposed to go up to Vermont and visit my girlfriend tonight. I need some proof.” I handed him my cell phone. “She’s the jealous type.”

“Sure, for a brother, no problem.” He took the pictures and handed the phone back to me. “Okay, the EMTs are here.”

THIRTY-FIVE

Pam believed the pictures of my smashed-up car and said she’d be down to take care of me. I didn’t even try telling her not to come. I wanted taking care of. I needed it. I’d been on an island by myself for too long and since that exile was self-imposed, I had only to look in the mirror to ascribe blame. I don’t suppose I ever forgave myself for Katy’s murder. It took seven years for Sarah to absolve me and the rest of the universe either didn’t know or didn’t care. If there was any persuasive argument for the existence of God, it wasn’t in the biology of things, but in emotion, in feelings. I couldn’t quite see how guilt and forgiveness had evolved from the primordial stew. I don’t know, maybe the “adult” relationship I’d been sharing with Pam over the last two years was just part of my self-inflicted exile. I let her in, but not inside. Suddenly, I wanted off the island and I didn’t care why.