Mad Dog Justice (2 page)
Authors: Mark Rubinstein
—St. Thomas Aquinas
Preview of Assassin’s Lullaby: One
D
anny Burns sits at his desk and rubs his forehead. His temples throb. Violently. It’s another headache, and this one’s going to be a bone crusher. It feels like a bench vise clamping down on Danny’s head. Doc Gordon says it must be from tension because he can’t find a thing wrong.
Tension, worry—that’s all life’s been since he and Roddy killed Grange and Kenny ten months ago.
It’s nearly eight o’clock on this frigid night in late February. The office is so quiet, Danny hears hissing in his ears. There’s an occasional whooshing of tires as cars pass by on McLean Avenue, two stories below. The windowpane rattles in a gust of wind. Danny reminds himself to talk to the landlord about installing thermal pane replacements.
Yeah, don’t hold your breath
, he thinks.
Donavan will never get it done. He’s too busy flipping properties all over Yonkers
.
The April 15 tax deadline is getting closer, and Dan’s got an avalanche of work. Most clients don’t use the worksheets he sends them. They mail in a jumble of jottings along with heaps of crinkled documents. He spends more time sorting through junk than entering data into the computer. It might be wise to hire another assistant for the next two months.
Danny knows he hasn’t been focused on his work. God Almighty, he used to zero in on things like a laser beam.
Detail
Dan
is what Angela called him, but for the last ten months he’s lucky if he remembers to slip into his pants each morning. And Angela’s been on top of him,
big-time
.
“You’re not listening to a word I say. You’re in another world,” she yells as he retraces his steps, looking for his wallet or cell phone. “Danny, something’s happened to you in the last few months.”
A nerve-jangling blast of sound interrupts his thoughts, and he lurches for the telephone. “Daniel Burns,” he says, trying to sound professional.
“Danny, when are you coming home?”
“Angie, honey, I have a ton of work.”
“Daniel …”
She uses his formal name only when she’s really pissed. She picked it up from Ma years ago. But nowadays, she uses it way too often. It’s annoying, but why start an argument? The headache will escalate into a jackhammer pounding mercilessly on his brain.
“Danny, you used to rush home for dinner. Now you’re a ghost.”
Ghost
. An icy shiver crawls down his spine. Ghost was Grange’s moniker, and Danny’s reminded of that night in the woods with Roddy, Grange, and Kenny. He’d give a million bucks to forget it all.
“Angie, I’ve been working on some deals for John Harris and Mike Sobin. You know Mike. He’s a very picky guy and flies off the—”
“Oh, c’mon, Danny. You’ve had tougher clients than Mike and never stayed at the office this late. What’s going on?”
“We’re getting closer to tax time, and I’m—”
“That’s nonsense. It’s been almost a year since I had the real Danny …
my
Danny. Since you and Roddy got rid of the restaurant, you’ve been jumpy and remote.”
“Remote?”
“Yes, Danny,
remote
. And Tracy says it’s the same with Roddy. And she wonders why you two see so little of each other these days. I was thinking about that, too. What’s going on?”
Danny wants to protest, but Angela’s right. She reads him like an open book. He closes his eyes and sighs. How can he tell her he and Roddy worry every day, wondering if the guillotine will drop? Will it be the Jersey mob or the Russian Brotherhood or Grange’s shadowy associates coming for them? And how can he tell Angela about that night near the swampy pond—with lanterns, peeping frogs, and crickets—the night of terror when they killed two men? The night that changed their lives forever.
Jesus, this is torture. We’ll never escape the monster we created when we went into business with Kenny Egan, a real slime ball who’s rotting in the soil an hour away from where we live in Tuckahoe
.
He’s about to say something when he hears a sound—something near the outer door. Is it the floor creaking? Is someone walking across the reception room floor?
Still holding the receiver, Dan peers at the partly opened door to his office. Angela’s still talking, and her words pour from the receiver in an eddy of noise tumbling into his right ear. Dan has no real thoughts at the moment—there’s just a primal awareness of danger.
He hears the creak once again, but it’s masked by a gust of wind against the windowpane.
The hairs on Dan’s wrist stand up as voltage sears through him.
“Wait, honey,” he says, craning his neck. He pushes his reading glasses down his nose, looks across the room, sees nothing, and says, “Angie, I’ll be home soon—”
It’s there. A blurred movement, very fast.
Danny pushes his chair back, squints, and tries focusing on the door, when at the same time, he hears a muffled sound, like
a cork being pulled from a wine bottle. Danny’s right hand and the telephone receiver explode in a shocking blast. Blinding pain ignites in his hand, and shards of plastic slash his ear and face. Something sears the back of his scalp.
Danny is thrust back in his chair. His body tightens and goes into a spasm as another cork pops. Something slams into his chest as he and the chair tumble back.
The overhead lights swirl, and Danny realizes he’s on the floor. The ceiling moves, and he hears furniture scraping; he knows he’s leaking away. He can’t breathe. A sucking sound comes from his chest. His mouth goes dry, and a coppery taste forms on his tongue. The room pinwheels like he’s in a whirlpool’s vortex. Everything is bleached, and his insides shudder. His mind is jumbled, going crazily from one thought to another. It all comes down to this truth:
Jesus, sweet Jesus. I deserve this
.
D
r. Roddy Dolan sits in a chair in the surgical waiting area. His arms are crossed with his hands tucked into his armpits. It’s hard to believe Danny’s been shot. It’s been hours, and there’s still no update on his condition. A thrumming sensation rampages through Roddy, as though a tuning fork vibrates in his chest. Is this payback?
“How could something like this happen?” Angela asks, pacing back and forth. Her dark eyes are red-rimmed, and her usually olive complexion is chalky white.
Roddy’s wife, Tracy, holds Angela’s hand as she walks with her. “Do you think it was a burglary?” she asks, looking at Roddy.
He shrugs and shakes his head. “How would I know?”
Roddy’s scalp tingles and then goes numb. His mind races, but one thought pierces him like an ice pick to his forehead:
John M. Grange and Associates. What we did that night in the woods … We’re being hunted
.
“If he hadn’t been on the phone with me,” Angela says with a shudder, “I don’t … I can’t even think about it.”
“What did you hear?” Roddy asks.
“Just—just Danny told me to wait, like he heard or saw something. And there was a popping sound, and then I heard a loud cracking. I think it was the telephone, like it blew up. Then there was static and humming, and I knew something terrible
happened.” Tears form wet ribbons down her face. “Oh, Roddy, he’ll be okay, won’t he?”
“I wish I could say, Angie. We have to wait for the surgeon.” Roddy’s voice sounds small and distant in his ears. He feels disconnected from himself. This is the situation his patients are forced to deal with, but tonight it’s his turn.
D
r. Jeffrey Ketchman is a burly man in his midfifties with rugged features and wavy brown hair. He wears surgical greens and white rubber clogs. He introduces himself and sits down in the lounge. “Let me assure you, things are going well.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Angela says, wiping her eyes. “This is Dr. Dolan, a surgeon at Lawrence Hospital and our dear friend.” Ketchman and Roddy shake hands.
“Please tell us the situation,” Roddy says.
“Mr. Burns was shot by a small-caliber bullet. It punctured a lung, which is still collapsed. But we’re taking care of that, Mrs. Burns,” Ketchman says, turning to Angela. “He’s very lucky. The bullet missed the aorta, went through the lung, and out his back. Nothing else vital was hit. He doesn’t even have a broken rib, only soft-tissue injury. He lost a great deal of blood and was in shock by the time the EMTs got there. He’s being transfused.”
Angela stifles a sob. Tracy slips an arm around her.
“We know he has asthma, and we don’t want to compromise the other lung. To keep pain and stress at a minimum, we have him on a morphine drip, so he’s sedated. He’s also on antibiotics, and there’s a chest tube implanted to help the lung drain and reinflate. It’s standard procedure with this kind of wound. We equalize the air pressure so the injured lung can get back to normal.”
Roddy nods. He knows this scenario very well.
“One bullet went through his hand, straight through the metacarpal bones,” Ketchman says, demonstrating on the back
of his hand. “It shattered the telephone receiver, and he has a few minor facial cuts. The phone deflected the bullet, so he got away with some lacerations and a minor scalp wound at the back of his head.”
“But he’ll be all right?” Tracy asks in a shaky voice.
“Yes. If not for the asthma, we’d have no real worries. We’ll keep him sedated and give him time to heal. Nature will take its course.”
“Can we see him now?” Angela asks.
“Of course, but only one visitor at a time in the ICU. He’s sedated and may not make much sense.”
R
oddy approaches Danny’s bedside and pulls the flimsy curtain aside. The place is like every ICU Roddy’s ever seen, especially at Lawrence Hospital: IVs drip, monitors beep, and the patients look like death warmed over.
Tubes snake everywhere. Dan’s being transfused, hydrated, and medicated. He’s on his back and his eyes are closed. His mop of red hair spreads onto the pillow like a halo. A flash image forms in Roddy’s head—dozens of years telescope in that moment: Roddy was sixteen and leaving a training session with Doc Schechter at Herbie’s Gym. His Golden Gloves bout was a week away.
On the corner of Emmons Avenue and Sheepshead Bay Road, Roddy saw Danny lying helplessly on the sidewalk. Two members of the Coyle Street Krauts—eighteen-year-old guys—were kicking him mercilessly. Danny—his blood brother since they were nine years old—was out of it, as the thugs’ shoes slammed into him again and again.
Roddy went mad dog berserk, which is how he got the moniker “Mad Dog.” He spun one hood around and sank a stone-handed punch into his gut. The guy doubled over; Roddy hurled
him onto the fender of a parked car. He slid down to the curb.
Roddy lunged at the other one before he could launch another kick at Danny. The guy was a big-boned Germanic-looking kid—huge but flabby.
“I’ll kick your Mickey Finn ass,” the guy snarled. Rearing back, he telegraphed a punch.
Roddy ducked and the guy’s club-like paw flew over him. His own fist shot up in a pile-driving uppercut. The kid’s jaw snapped up and he wobbled backward. Roddy landed a lightning-fast series of chopping blows. They were hard, thumping shots, and it all seemed like a dream. The crowd that gathered roared, but Roddy heard nothing, neither the street throng nor the police car’s siren.
A huge pair of arms circled him. He was thrown to the ground by two burly cops. Face down, he felt handcuffs snap on his wrists. “You’re under arrest for assault,” an officer growled, pulling him to his feet. Craning his neck, Roddy saw the two Germans hobbling away.
“No! No!” cried Rosario, the butcher, running out of his store. His bloodstained apron covered his rotund belly. “Those two attacked this boy,” Rosario yelled, pointing at the retreating Germans. Danny lay there. Blood dripped from his mouth, forming a coagulating puddle on the sidewalk.
“You okay, son?” one cop asked, kneeling next to Dan.
Danny’s eyes rolled up into his head.
Now Roddy peers closely at Dan and sees that same face he saw on the pavement years ago. He can hardly believe his childhood blood brother lies in an ICU bed at St. Joe’s after being shot.
Are we being hunted because of what we did to Grange and Kenny and what happened at McLaughlin’s Steakhouse?
The ICU seems to darken as Roddy’s vision dims.
Roddy sits at the edge of the bed, leans down, and whispers, “How you doing, kemosabe?”
Danny mumbles, “Dunno nothin’.”
Dan smells of antiseptic—of betadine and bandages. Spittle sits at the corners of his mouth. Roddy wipes it away with his finger. He places his palm on Danny’s forehead. No fever. Good … no infection. Danny will make it.
Danny’s eyelids flutter. His lips part. His breath smells like acetone.
“Dan, listen to me. Don’t say anything. Nod your head if you can hear me.”
Dan’s head moves slightly, but Roddy wonders if Dan truly understands anything. Is he so metabolically shocked he’ll utter some garbled nonsense amounting to a confession? Will he spill everything in a drug-induced haze?
