Mad Dog Justice (26 page)

After dressing, he dials the reception desk. “I’m checking out. Please have my bill ready. And a car service. Ask them to be here in fifteen minutes. I’ll be going to Manhattan.”

At the closet, he decides to leave behind the dark gray ski jacket and baseball cap he’d worn earlier that day. He’ll wear the nondescript black jacket, along with a black cap he bought yesterday on Livingston Street. Even though it’s night, he’ll wear the wraparound sunglasses he picked up at CVS.

Then it happens: he hears something on the other side of the door—in the hallway.

His body goes rigid. He listens intently. He waits, but hears nothing. Just hissing in his ears again. Nothing more.

Yes, his senses are aroused. He’s so primed—in a state of hyperalertness—he can misinterpret the most benign things. As though he hears blood rushing through his brain or senses his arteries pulsing.

He hears whispering again. Just beyond the door. And shoes moving on the carpet.

He moves closer and listens.

Someone is outside his door.

His body stiffens.

He again hears whispering voices.

At the bedside table, he grabs the revolver and gently pulls back the hammer.

He approaches the door again and stands off to the side, pressing his ear against it.

More whispering. Indecipherable. He can’t make out what they’re saying or tell if it’s English.

Two or more men are at the door.

The hissing in his ears intensifies.

He waits, but there’s silence.

Have they gone away? Is he mishearing? Was it just two people
walking along the corridor?

He sizes up the door: it’s thick, sturdy-looking, and double locked. But he won’t look through the peephole. He backs away toward the bed, his revolver ready.

A knock on the door—a gentle rap.

Roddy’s body jolts in a galvanic spasm. He feels hot-wired and breaks out in a sweat.

Another knock.

“Room service, sir,” says a muffled voice.

Is there an accent? Doesn’t matter; it’s them. He didn’t order anything from room service. He was followed. How could that have happened?

He pictures two men outside the door, glancing left and right, just waiting for the door to open. Their hands are buried in their jackets, where they have pistols—most likely .22s with silencers. If he opens the door, he’ll see quick flashes of light. He’ll hear nothing, just a slamming thwack as lead rips into him. There will be a slug to the head and a couple to the heart.

And it’s over.

Or, he could stand off to the side, unlatch the door handle, let them push their way in, and blow them away.

Too risky. Too many complications.

He crouches behind the bed with his pistol aimed at the door.

Another knock. More whispering, barely audible.

He picks up the bedside telephone receiver and dials reception.

“Please send hotel security to room 2017,” he whispers. “Someone’s at my door claiming to be room service. I didn’t order anything. In fact, I’m checking out.”

“Right away, sir,” says the receptionist. “Do you want me to stay on the line with you?”

“No. Just send them up.”

There’s the faint sound of footsteps fading down the corridor.

A minute later, he hears a forceful knock on the door.

“Hotel security, sir,” calls a voice.

Roddy moves to the side of the door. “Will you please slip some ID under the door?”

A plastic laminated ID card slides beneath the door. Roddy picks it up and examines it. It’s the real deal. Opening the door, he sees two burly men in dark suits. They have that security look—buzz cuts, thick necks, jutting jaws, and supplement-enhanced body builds.

“What’s the problem, sir?” asks one, a crew-cut guy with a flattened nose.

Roddy explains what happened.

“You did the right thing calling for us. We have two conventions in-house right now. Some of these guys get loaded and play dumb pranks.”

“I’m checking out, guys. Will you escort me downstairs and wait until I get into the car I ordered?”

“Of course. And please accept the hotel’s apologies, sir.”

At the reception desk, Roddy sneaks a few glances around the lobby. Is anyone loitering or watching him? It’s ten p.m., and the place is quiet. A few people sit in lounge chairs nursing nightcaps—mostly couples at tables set strategically around the lobby and mezzanine.

He glances at the security guards; one of them casts a knowing glance at the other. They think he’s paranoid. They flank him as he makes his way out the front entrance to Adams Street, where a town car waits for him.

“Take the Brooklyn Bridge to the FDR and then go uptown to Grand Central,” Roddy tells the driver.

As they head over the bridge, traffic thickens to a sickeningly slow pace. There’s a car stalled in the right lane of the Manhattan-bound side of the bridge. Passing the choke point, the car picks up speed. Roddy looks back at the squall of headlights behind him. Is he being followed? No way to know. The town car’s tires
drub heavily on the roadway. Roddy slips the Metro North train schedule from his canvas bag but can’t read it in the car’s dark interior. He won’t turn on the lamp, fearing he might be seen by anyone tailing him. Besides, Metro North might not be a good idea. Because Roddy’s sure those were hit men outside his door, and he has no idea where they are now.

He was being watched as he checked out of the hotel. He’s certain of that. Was he followed back to the Marriott from the pub? It could have been that guy who asked the young men outside for a light. He might have been lurking in a nearby doorway, watching when Roddy left the place and hopped into a taxi. Or it could have been the woman who approached him at the bar. It barely matters: he’s being tracked.

The town car crosses the bridge and loops onto the FDR Drive heading uptown. “Go to 42nd Street,” Roddy tells the driver.

The car exits the FDR at 42nd Street and heads west, toward Grand Central Terminal. “Let me off at the far corner of Lexington,” Roddy says. He fishes a fifty from his wallet and hands it to the driver.

Roddy jumps from the car and races into the Lexington Avenue entrance of Grand Central. He walks briskly past the interior entrance to the Graybar Building. At the end of the walkway, he makes a sharp left and turns into the Lexington Passage, as though he’s headed toward the Lexington Avenue subway line. At this hour, the stores in the arcade are closed and very few people walk along the passageway. Nearing the stairway leading to the subway, he turns abruptly into the passageway leading to the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

Entering the hotel, he glances around. An escalator leads to a futuristic expanse that reminds Roddy of the movie
2001: A Space Odyssey
. Everything is in grays, blacks, and whites. At one of the many registration desks, he hands the receptionist his credit card and gets a room for the night. He scans the lobby and
sees nothing suspicious.

“I’d like to order a town car for nine in the morning,” he tells the receptionist.

“Surely, sir. Where will you be going?”

“To Westchester County, near Port Chester. I have the address.”

“It will be taken care of, sir.”

“And one other thing.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Can you send a barber up to my room at seven forty-five in the morning? I’ll need a shave and a haircut.”

“We can arrange that, sir.”

With his hand holding the pistol in his pocket, Roddy heads for the elevator.

R
oddy pays the barber, who has finished wrapping up his equipment.

In the bathroom, he looks at himself in the mirror. It’s a strange sight: he’s been shorn bald and his face has been shaved clean. The air feels cold on his bare scalp.

When the barber has gone, he telephones the concierge. The town car is waiting on 42nd Street.

In the lobby, Roddy pays his bill and walks out the hotel’s main entrance. The winter air feels frigid on his bare scalp. The morning glare is blinding as he heads toward a sleek black town car with blackened windows.

“Rye Brook,” he says to the driver. “The Doral Arrowwood Hotel. Take the FDR to the Major Deegan. From there, take the Cross County Parkway to the Hutch.”

R
oddy gazes out the window at the hotel grounds. He watches an elderly couple cross the parking area, huddled against the February cold.

“I’ve been thinking, Roddy. This thing with Crystal,” Danny says.

“Poor woman. She was more than eye candy. She had a brain and had plenty of soul, too.”

“The thing I said was nagging at me …”

“Yeah.”

“It has to do with Crystal—indirectly, but there could be a connection.”

“So, let it fly,” Roddy says.

“When you mentioned she was living at Continental Towers, it rang a bell in the back of my mind.”

“How so?”

“That party I mentioned, the one Angela and I went to, there was champagne and caviar, the whole nine yards. I remember the building very well. It was an open house thrown by a real estate broker—guy named Art Nager. He was trying to sell the place for this honcho … name was Nathanson … Barry Nathanson. He ran a hundred-million-dollar hedge fund.

“The gathering was part of a pitch for the sale. Nager must’ve spent thirty grand of the seller’s money on the bash. You know, there’s a TV program where they show that kind of thing—
Selling New York
.

“I remember it because the place was like an office building … so tall. I felt uncomfortable riding in the elevator. My ears were popping.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s where I met John Harris.”

“The real estate guy I met visiting you at St. Joe’s?”

“Yeah. I met him that night. It was long before we got involved with Kenny and the restaurant.”

“I gotta tell you, Dan, I didn’t like the guy with his three-thousand-dollar suit. I didn’t care for his goddamned Gucci shoes and his smugly superior attitude.”

Danny chortles. “Roddy, you’ve never been good at hiding your feelings. But there’s something else.” Dan’s voice trails off. He strokes his chin with his thumb and index finger.

“What is it, Danny?”

“About two weeks before I got shot, I was working on this file for Harris—some property in Aruba—and there were a few figures that looked a little
off
to me, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I called John to make an appointment to go over the numbers. It looked like an accounting glitch, but when I got ahold of him, he said he was too busy and didn’t have time to see me. I made some kind of stupid joke about it. I don’t even remember what I said. But he said he’d get back to me.”

“So?”

“I didn’t hear from him. I remember thinking it was strange, like he was avoiding me for some reason; and soon after that, I got shot.”

“You saying you think
Harris
is behind all this?”

“I don’t know. When you mentioned Crystal living at Continental Towers, it came back to me—meeting Harris there a couple of years ago and this thing with the Aruba deal.”

“So what’s nagging at you?”

“You remember seeing Harris that day at St. Joe’s?” Dan asks.

“Yeah, sure.”

“I’ve been to his home plenty of times and I’ve had dealings with him. I know the guy pretty well. He looked nervous that day at St. Joe’s. And the first thing he talked about—after asking how I was feeling—was the Aruba deal. He said it was being put on hold.”

“Yeah, I remember hearing that.”

“I thought it was weird that he’d kill the deal.”

“Okay. So maybe there are some financial shenanigans going on with this Aruba thing. What does that have to do with you getting shot?”

“I don’t know.”

“And whoever had you shot is also coming after
me
? How does
that
fit?”

“It doesn’t.”

Dan shakes his head.

“Look, Danny, Harris never even
met
me until that morning at St. Joe’s. For him, I barely
existed
. And whoever’s coming for us wants us
both
out of the picture. How could Harris be involved in
that
?”

“You’re right. It doesn’t compute.”

“And don’t forget, this guy Grange—or Gargano—was a made man. And word on the street is he’s missing. People’re looking for him. We don’t have any idea about who might have known he was trying to extort us.”

Danny nods and begins pacing.

“And how did Crystal know someone’s after us?” Roddy says. “And why was
she
killed? The only connection between Crystal, you, and me—and Kenny, too—was McLaughlin’s. And that place was a mob hangout … mostly Russians by the time it closed, according to Crystal. So it’s either the mafia or the Russian mob.
That’s
where this is coming from.”

“I guess so.”

“Listen, Dan. In medicine—and in life—you’re always best off going where experience and past history point you. It’s common sense. If you’ve seen five hundred patients over the years with right-sided pain in the lower abdomen along with nausea and vomiting and it turned out to be appendicitis, it’s a good bet the next patient presenting the same way has appendicitis. You don’t make a leap in your thinking and conclude it’s the gallbladder.”

Danny shrugs his shoulders. “Sounds logical.”

“Let’s face it, Danny. We don’t know any more now than we did ten or eleven days ago.”

“Maybe so, but I’m gonna find out more.”

“Meaning what?”

“I gotta talk to someone first.”

“Who?”

“Guy who does some IT work for me.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“It’s just a hunch.”

“So tell me. But before you do, tell me this: we still on that deadline?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know a goddamned thing anymore.”

D
anny peers out the right rear window of the town car. Looking at the Yonkers streets, he realizes how good it is to get the hell out of the hotel. Just the change of scenery makes it worthwhile. He tells the driver to slow down as he sees the four-story yellow brick building on McLean Avenue. It sits amid the last Irish enclave still existing in Yonkers, adjacent to the Woodlawn section of the North Bronx.
God, how time changes everything … and nothing
, Danny thinks.