Mad Dog Justice (24 page)

“A woman jumped from a balcony on the fortieth floor.”

“Oh my God,” cries a woman. “The
fortieth
floor?”

“She must’ve burst apart like a blood blister,” someone says.

“I think I’m going to vomit,” the woman mutters and pushes back from the barrier.

The fortieth floor … and at the southwest corner of the building
.

Roddy peers closely at the tarp. Bare feet protrude from beneath an end of the covering.

It was only this morning he was here, in apartment 40-A. The A-line balconies are at the southwest corner of the building. He looks upward amid the swirl of lights at the intersection. The A-line apartments—and their balconies—are directly above where the tarp-covered body lies. The corpse lies at least five feet farther from where it would have landed from a direct drop. Meaning Crystal could have been thrown from the balcony. She landed farther from the building than would have resulted from a straight downward fall.

“Was it suicide?” someone asks.

“Looks that way,” says a man.

Roddy is certain the dead woman is Crystal. And there’s a good chance she was pushed or thrown from the balcony.

“Anyone know her name?” someone asks.

“The police aren’t saying,” replies a woman to Roddy’s left. “But she lived in the building.”

Roddy turns to make his way back through the crowd.

He freezes: there’s Bluetooth Guy.

He’s eight feet away, standing in the crowd, blue and red police lights dancing over him as he stares up at the building. Same
grizzled face, those dead eyes, and the Bluetooth device is angled over his right ear.

Has he seen Roddy? Was this the plan? To lure him into Manhattan and ambush him when he got to the apartment? No, it couldn’t have been. The place is crawling with cops. If they threw Crystal from the balcony, they must have planned to intercept him on the street—exactly where he is now.

In a few seconds, Roddy dopes out their possible game plan. Soon after Crystal called him, they tossed her from the balcony, thinking he’d arrive by eleven. By then, the body would be gone and the crowd would have dispersed. They’d be waiting for him on the street. He’d be an easy target since they know what he looks like—from that guy in the Navigator. It would be an ambush, right here at the intersection or maybe as he’d approach the building entrance. Or maybe they’d wait for him to arrive at eleven and follow him.

Arriving early saved his life.

Pushing through the crowd, Roddy quells a hot spike of panic that jumps through him. His heart pounds insanely as he slips through the throng and heads west on 79th Street. Dread gnaws at him as his thoughts race in frenzied profusion. Did Bluetooth Guy see him? There’s no way to tell. There must be two of them, maybe three or more. They’re in contact with each other. Are they tracking him at this very moment?

He turns right on 3rd Avenue and heads uptown, staying on the east side of the street. He passes retail stores, a health club, and a string of restaurants overflowing with patrons. The avenue virtually throbs with nighttime activity. His eyes sweep left and right, behind him and across the street. A parade of people move along the sidewalks on both sides of the avenue; it’s impossible to tell if he’s being tailed.

Craning his neck, he searches the avenue for a taxi. A stream of cabs moves uptown on 3rd; not a single one has its top light on
to signal it’s available.

He stops in front of a closed video store and ducks into the recessed entranceway. Huddled there, he peers down the avenue toward 79th Street, watching people stream by. He decides to wait for anyone suspicious-looking who might be coming from 79th Street, heading north. Or, he’ll wait to see if someone loiters on the avenue. He would certainly recognize Bluetooth Guy if he passes. Roddy’s right hand slips into his pocket to the pistol.

He could ambush whoever might be following—stick the revolver in his back and force him into the alcove. Then what would he do? Put a Ranger move on his larynx? Grab his windpipe and squeeze it like a vise so the guy yields to the pressure and talks, tells him exactly what’s going on?
Tell me, motherfucker, or it’s your last breath
.

And then what? Snap the edge of his palm into the guy’s larynx so the cartilage is crushed? The hyoid bone or the cricoid? It’s a simple matter of knowing the anatomy. Or, break his neck with a chopping blow behind his fifth cervical vertebrae? Let him drop slowly to the floor of the alcove and walk away?

And then what does he do?

Roddy waits in a state of primed anticipation.

No one suspicious passes by. There’s no sign of Bluetooth Guy.

He steps out from the doorway and rejoins the flow of people. Between 82nd Street and 83rd, he comes to the Gael Pub. The door opens, and two young men amble out amid a burst of noise from the tavern’s interior. Roddy steps into the place before the door closes.

The change from the frigid air of outdoors to the pub’s interior is an assault on his senses. The alehouse is overheated and jammed with young people—men and women in their twenties and thirties—
millennials
, Roddy thinks they’re called. The crowd is so dense, it heightens Roddy’s sense of estrangement, his loneliness.

The place is dimly lit, noisy, and redolent of malt, burgers, and fries. It’s stacked with humanity—wall-to-wall people—guzzling beer, ale, and wine, talking, shouting, and laughing above the din of rock music. Roddy recognizes “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen soaring through the sound system. If anyone’s following, this place seems as good as any to get lost in a crowd.

Roddy glances about, trying to find an empty barstool, but there’s none. He decides instead to head to the rear of the pub. He could be safe in this tavern, but you never know. In Ranger school they were taught to always know escape routes from any situation.

He threads through the crowd and makes his way to a dimly lit hallway past the kitchen’s clatter. The restrooms are on his right:
Women
closer to the main room and
Men
toward the hallway’s rear. A metal door with a steel push bar stands at the far end of the corridor—a fire exit. He pushes the bar down, opens the door, and peers out to a poorly lit alleyway. About twenty feet away, it angles off to the right, leading to 82nd Street.

Back in the corridor, he opens the door to the men’s room and peers in. It smells of deodorant cake and piss. It has two unoccupied toilet stalls. On the opposite side of the room, two urinals are affixed to a white tiled wall. A small window is at the far end of the room. He enters, goes to the window, and slides it up. It would be a tight squeeze, but with some squirming, he could slip through it onto a covered Dumpster just below. Then he’d be in the alleyway leading to 82nd Street. There are two escape routes—the rear door and the restroom window.

Back in the tavern, there’s still no sign of an empty stool. People are bellied up to the bar—three and four deep. Roddy edges into the bar crowd. Soon, a young woman gets off a stool and melts into the throng. Roddy grabs the stool, sits, and takes in his surroundings. It feels like he’s back in Brooklyn: pumped and primed—ready to brawl. The music seems louder and pounds in
his ears.

He gazes up at the tin ceiling: no wonder the noise level is cacophonous—every sound bounces off the ceiling. All hard surfaces: wood, tile, and tin. Music and voices bore into his brain. The bar is well-worn mahogany. Roddy eyes a line of decorative tap handles, some with leprechauns, others with logos for Killian’s Irish Red, Caffrey’s Irish Ale, or Guinness. The wall behind the bar is stacked with tiers of every known whiskey brand, all sitting beneath a pale green light radiating from a source recessed in the ceiling. The barroom bluster is boisterous—even deafening—but doesn’t seem rowdy. It’s the kind of place Roddy might have enjoyed twenty years earlier. He inhales the aroma of sizzling burgers mixed with beery malt and hops.

Catching the bartender’s eye, Roddy orders a mug of Guinness stout on draft. He’ll kill fifteen or twenty minutes—just to be safe—before getting out of here.
Kill a few minutes
… kill … and his thoughts spin back to the sight of Crystal’s body beneath that tarp on the sidewalk. A knot forms in his chest as he recalls talking with her only a short while ago. Now she’s gone; she’s nothing but a broken corpse. Jesus, the world’s such an ugly, hateful place. He closes his eyes and leans his head in his hand with an elbow perched on the bar.

A frothy mug of beer plops onto the bar. He drops a twenty down next to it and then lifts the mug and sips through the foam to the brew. The taste is smooth, creamy, even chocolaty. The barkeep deposits his change on the bar. Peering about the place, Roddy realizes he’s older than everyone in the room. He can’t recall the last time he was at a bar alone—without Tracy. Thinking of Tracy and the kids, a wave of sadness floods him.

Sitting amid the tavern’s maelstrom, Roddy is again assaulted by an image of Crystal’s body lying on the sidewalk. She died because of him. Pushed or thrown to her death because someone knew he visited her this morning. Another poor soul who’s dead
because of him: Crystal Newcomb along with Walt McKay.

He senses a presence to his right. Roddy turns; a thirty something woman with short blond hair and painted red lips stands beside him. She’s virtually pressed against him in the crowd’s crush. Somehow, she managed to squeeze through the mob. She shoots Roddy a quick smile. He nods in return and, to his surprise, she leans closer to him, so near that he smells spearmint on her breath. She keeps eyeing him. Her eyes brighten and she smiles again, this time more broadly. She raises her bottle of Murphy’s Stout and takes a quick swig, never averting her eyes from him. She wears silver eye shadow.

Roddy senses danger. It bubbles up from inside him. Just who is this woman, and what does she want?

“How ya doin’?” she asks in a husky voice.

Have the Russians sent her as a lure? He hasn’t shaved in days—not since before Walt was killed—he looks seedy, especially sitting in a tavern where he’s decades older than anyone else. Yet this attractive woman is coming on to him. Or is she?

She’s peering directly into his eyes. Feeling self-conscious, it occurs to Roddy he’s nearly old enough to be her father.

She seems to be making some assessment of his willingness to engage her. “Ya doin’ okay?” she asks.

“Just fine,” he replies, as his legs feel like coiled springs.

“Haven’t seen you here before, have I?” she asks as her eyes rove over him.

“No. It’s my first time here.” He wants to move away from her, but the mob presses too closely. His stomach clenches.

“You live in the city?”

“No. Brooklyn.”

He wonders what on earth made him say
Brooklyn
. But for the last few days, he hasn’t been there in decades. But why care what he says? Who the hell is this woman, and what does she want?

“Brooklyn?” she snorts. “Like everyone lives there now.” Her eyes roll upward.

“It’s where I’m from,” he says as memories of Sheepshead Bay streak through his thoughts.

She takes another swig of beer and then looks into his eyes once again.

He squints and scrutinizes her; he’s so close, he can see the blond hairs on her cheeks. She’s pretty in a hard kind of way, and there’s a rough-hewn edge to her, something that makes Roddy wary. She’s obviously trying to engage him, maybe entice him into something—a dalliance. For all he knows, she could be one of
them
. They don’t
all
have to be men. And they don’t
have
to be Russian or Eastern European. She’s slithered next to him in this jam-packed tavern, having just come out of nowhere like an apparition. He can picture the scenario: she comes on to him, and if he were a fool or a horn dog, he’d drink a bit more, get a buzz on, and they’d leave together.

So, they’d get into her car and she’d drive to the Bronx or Queens—she’s probably part of the bridge-and-tunnel set. Most likely Queens—it’s a short hop over the Queensboro Bridge—where her apartment is supposed to be. They’d pull up in front of a two-story house in Astoria or some other section of Queens—maybe Flushing or Corona—and they’d get out of her car. It’s a quiet area—residential, tree-lined, a deserted street with maybe one or two lampposts casting pinkish light—and as they walk toward her place, two guys would come out of nowhere. Russians—menacing thugs—and there’d be a moment of utter clarity as he’d see their pistols with sound suppressors pointing right at him. He’d see the “O” at the end of each piece. Then he’d hear a
pop
, and he’d be clipped. Down and out.

Or it could happen here—in the press of flesh in this noise-filled tavern. People are packed so tightly at the bar that if she shoved a shiv into his gut, he wouldn’t even fall to the floor. He’d
be held upright by the sardine-packed mob, and he’d drop only when the crowd thins out.

Another thought comes to Roddy—one he hasn’t had for twenty-five years, since his days as a Ranger: the femoral artery. She could slice it open in a second. Other than the carotid, it’s the most superficial artery in the body—very vulnerable to attack.

Yes, it’s the huge artery supplying the leg with blood, not far from the surface—right there in the upper thigh—and could be severed in a second by someone with a knife. A razor-sharp blade doesn’t cause pain as it slices through trousers and flesh. The victim barely feels it—just a slight sting, and before he knows what’s happening, things look bleached white and his leg is wet and warm. It’s death by slashing—up close and personal. For the victim, it’s over in ten, twenty seconds. It’s a quick, pumping bleed-out as your life’s blood spurts everywhere. Your pulse goes thready, you grow light-headed, and within twenty seconds, you’re dying amid a spreading lake of your own blood.

He suddenly realizes he’s peering down at his beer—paying no attention to the woman at his right. A pang of alarm seizes him and he whirls abruptly toward her.

She’s gone.

Does he feel wetness on his leg? Is blood shooting out of him?

He peers down at his lap, feels his thigh, and moves his leg.