Mad Dog Justice (7 page)

Roddy waits, saying nothing.

“Well, you’re gonna need one, too. Bigger than anything we can provide.”

Roddy stands and hears cracking from his knees.

“We had nothing to do with any mob.”

“Have it your way, Doc.” Morgan leans back in the chair and tilts his head.

Roddy moves toward the door.

“Oh, Doc?”

Roddy turns back and exhales. “Yeah?”

“Whaddaya think Burns meant when he said, ‘We had to do it. We had no choice’?”

“I have no idea.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You change your mind, you know where to find me, Doc.”

“I haven’t got any idea about any of this,” Roddy says, shaking his head.

“Take care, Doc.”

R
oddy knows he has to talk with Danny so they’re on the same page with Morgan. Because this Yonkers dick is talking to them separately—playing them off each other, because he smells rotten fish in this whole thing. He’s digging and pushing deeper and deeper, sniffing everywhere.

But now, with Danny shot and Walt McKay dead, everything’s changed. There’s no way Roddy sees his life the way he did only a few days ago—before it all came churning back like that shark Morgan talked about … the one from
Jaws
.

It’s here, and it’s now, and that shark’s gonna chomp and maul its way through everything.

And everything that’s been good—for him, Tracy and the kids, and for Danny and Angela, too—is gonna be gone.

His life as he’s known it all these years, it’s over.

It’s dead and gone.

R
oddy pulls the Rogue into the attached garage of their Tudor-style home in Bronxville. He sits behind the wheel listening to the engine tick, realizing he has no clear recollection of driving home from the hospital. He’s been in a complete fog—cogitating endlessly about what happened tonight.

Morgan’s words echo in his ears:
“There’s always the FBI
.”

And there was that wiseass crack:
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Roddy knows he has to do something, but
what
?

His thoughts swirl in endless loops … Danny … Tracy, Angela, and all their kids … Walt McKay, poor guy, and his family … Morgan’s prying … Grange and Kenny eating dirt upstate … the Russians … the Fontana brothers … and mob associates of Grange … if Grange was connected to organized crime … Jesus, what a snake pit he and Danny have stumbled into.

Roddy doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting in the car, but a glance at the dashboard clock tells him it’s eleven thirty. It seems like only minutes ago he was with Morgan in the doctors’ lounge. He gets out of the Rogue and enters the house through the door to the kitchen. Tracy gets up from the breakfast room table and rushes into his arms. She’s wearing a nightgown and bathrobe.

“Oh, Roddy, this is awful. Walt McKay? I can’t believe it,” she whispers in a shaky voice. She rests her head against his chest. He
wonders if she hears his heart drubbing like a jackhammer.

“I know, honey. It’s terrible.”

“What happened?” she asks, pulling back and looking up at him. Her green eyes are wide with worry.

He pulls her closer to him. “The police don’t know yet. It might’ve been a random thing, but they’re not sure.” The edges of the kitchen are blurred—the cabinets and sink grow fuzzy—so Roddy closes his eyes. It feels so comforting to hold Tracy close to him. He breathes in the scent of her hair.

“And Danny,” she says. “This is all so incredible.”

“I spoke with Ketchman today. Danny’s gonna be out of the hospital in a few days.”

“First Danny, now Walt. What’s going on?”

“They’re not related, honey.” Roddy feels like cringing at his own lie.

L
ying on his back, Roddy cranes his neck and peers at the night-stand clock. It’s 2:11 a.m. He hasn’t had a single second of sleep. He hears Tracy’s steady breathing to his right. Hers is the sleep of the innocent. And Roddy … his is the wakefulness of the damned.

His mind has been on a nonstop rampage. It should be
him
lying on a cold metal slab in the county morgue instead of Walt McKay. And if not for the luck of the Irish, Danny would be in the Yonkers morgue or laid out in a Tuckahoe funeral home by now. Yes, they’d both be dead and their families would have to go on without them.

Roddy’s pajamas and pillow are soaked. The hair at the back of his head is matted with sweat. He sits up in bed and swings his feet to the floor. He tries to swallow, but his throat is too parched and it feels like razor blades are lodged there. Roddy realizes he’s sweating so much, he’ll soon dehydrate. He decides to shower
and let the hot water wash away some of the tension and worry consuming him. And maybe something will come to him—an idea of what to do—because sometimes ideas come to him in the shower. One thing’s certain: he can’t sit passively like a target duck at a Coney Island shooting arcade.

He pads into the master bathroom, closes the door, strips off his pajamas, and tosses them into the hamper. He gulps down a cup of water, feeling its coldness all the way down his gullet. Shivering, he reaches into the glass-enclosed shower, turns on the hot water, and adjusts the temperature. Soon the room is filled with steam vapor.

As Roddy stands beneath the near-scalding stream of water, his thoughts continue on a fast track to nowhere. As water sloshes over his head, he’s reminded of the night he and Danny drove back from Snapper Pond. After getting home, he’d showered that night, too, knowing he’d crossed a line—he’d murdered two men, one in cold blood and the other in self-defense. Unable to sleep afterward, he’d nearly jumped out of his skin with every sound he heard—a car passing by or the normal sounds of a house at night. He knows those same sick feelings will return now.

It’s ten months later, and an ominous black cloud has rolled into their lives. He can’t tell Tracy a thing, and he can’t be truthful with Morgan—unless he wants to be indicted for double murder. Premeditated, with malice aforethought. Along with Danny. And then they’ll rot forever in some prison hellhole. It all goes back to that snake Kenny Egan, that obese loan shark Grange, and the whole McLaughlin’s debacle.

And then there’s Danny.

Since Snapper Pond, he’s been distant. It’s as though the guy’s built some invisible barrier between himself and Roddy. Yeah, they’d agreed to keep low profiles, but there’s something cool, even snarky in Dan’s voice when they’re on the telephone, which hasn’t been often.

And they’ve seen very little of each other since it all went down. It’s amazing; Roddy calls the entire scenario that night
Snapper Pond
. It’s become a code phrase for everything that happened: from the McLaughlin’s escapade to that night in the woods and everything since then. And he and Tracy have been together with Danny and Angela maybe two times over the last ten months and only when Tracy invited them to their home for dinner.

Jesus, they used to see each other at least twice a month. And he and Dan were on the phone every week. But it’s all changed. Roddy has this strange feeling that a layer of ice has formed on the deep lake of their friendship. Something erosive has crept into their lives.

It’s amazing how one mistake can mushroom into something you could never anticipate—like poison seeping into every part of your life. If only Roddy’d stuck with his instincts; he’d never have gone into business with Kenny. But Danny crunched the numbers and said it would all work out. The numbers … Danny’s always trusted the numbers. But this time they were all bogus.

It’s useless to ponder the past and what he should or shouldn’t have done. There are no do-overs. That only happens when you’re a kid. In this world, you live with your mistakes; you keep moving ahead to stay in front of the steamroller called life.

Soaping his arms and shoulders, Roddy thinks back to his time in the Rangers. Sergeant Dawson would have plenty to say about this situation: “
Once you know the enemy’s position, you figure out a plan. You go on the offense. Don’t ever play defense.”

And Doc Schechter—his old boxing trainer—would add: “
Don’t be a wild beast, Roddy. Tame the animal inside. Execute a strategy. Stick to it and then take your opponent out.”

But you can’t execute a strategy if you don’t even know who the enemy is. Where does that leave him? He’ll try to learn as much as he can. How can he do that? From what Morgan said
about the Russians—if they’re the ones after him and Danny—they’ll strike their families. Roddy shudders at the thought of something happening to Tracy and the kids. He and Danny will have to get their wives and kids out of Bronxville and Tuckahoe pronto.

A vision of Walt McKay intrudes as Roddy shampoos his hair. Walt lying there like a dead animal—limp and lifeless—on the damp, cold garage floor. Roddy knows it’s his fault Walt’s dead. Jesus, his wife’s a widow, and his kids are fatherless. Roddy can’t bear the thought of going to the funeral. Even trying to picture Walt’s family crying over the coffin sends Roddy into a dreary tailspin. And seeing hundreds of hospital colleagues at the requiem Mass would be absolutely intolerable; a swell of nausea rises from his guts.

But before he even thinks of any funeral, he must take care of certain things.

He’s got to get to St. Joseph’s and talk with Danny. They’ve gotta make sure they’re on the same page for this bloodhound Morgan. Otherwise, it’ll be all over. They’ll end up rotting away at Attica, Sing Sing, or some other upstate shithole.

For the rest of their worthless lives.

D
anny’s been transferred to the medical floor, where he’s been assigned a single-bed room. When Roddy arrives, he finds Dan sitting in a bedside easy chair, wearing a hospital johnny coat covered by a matching hospital-issue robe. Gone are the IVs and tubes protruding from everywhere. His color is back to normal.

“You look great,” Roddy says, bending down toward him. Dan stretches his arms out. It’s comforting to feel Dan near him. They embrace and clap each other’s back with Dan sitting in the chair. “How do you feel?”

“I gotta get outta this place. I can’t stand being here.”

“Jesus, Dan. It’s only three nights ago you were at death’s door. Don’t rush it.”

“I feel good to go.” He leans toward Roddy and whispers, “Frankly, kemosabe, I don’t feel safe here.”

Roddy nods. “Look, Dan, I know you’ve been through a lot, but I gotta bring you up to speed with what’s happened.”

“I hope you have some good news.”

“Afraid not.” Roddy sits on the edge of the bed, leans toward Danny, and tells him—in a very low voice—about Walt McKay. He relates every detail of what happened and tells him about the interview with Morgan. “Actually, the guy was interrogating me—and he was focused on the restaurant and Kenny. He
suspects we’re hiding something.”

“You’re sure the bullet was meant for you?” Dan half whispers, with widened eyes. His pupils look dilated, and a sheen forms on his forehead.

“Not a shred of doubt, Danny. We’re
both
in someone’s cross-hairs. That’s the bottom line, plain and simple.”

“Now I really wanna get the fuck outta here.” Dan’s eyes flit about the room. He rubs his mop of red hair. “Doc says I’ll get outta here in a few days. The only trouble I’ll have is with this.” He lifts up his casted right hand and grimaces.

“Dan, if it’s some mob—especially the Russians—Tracy, Angela, and the kids aren’t safe. We gotta get them the hell away.”

“Oh, shit. What the fuck am I gonna tell Angela?” Dan’s lower lip quivers as the sheen on his forehead glistens brightly in the light slanting in through the window.

“The same thing I’ll tell Tracy.”

“Yeah … what’s that gonna be?”

“Let’s lay it out together, right now, so we’re on the same page. But before we do that, I have to ask you, what the fuck’ve you been telling this dick, Morgan?”

“He’s been all over me like shit on a pig.”

“So what’d you tell him? We gotta get this straight.”

“I told him the basics.”

“Meaning what?”

“Like we agreed the night it all went down. I told him about Kenny and his three hundred K and the restaurant and our getting out.”

“Did you tell him we know Kenny got two fifty from someone else?”

“No. I made out like he put in the whole three hundred.”

“Morgan knows about Kenny only putting in fifty. He knows the other two fifty came from an unknown source, from the Cayman Islands. He told me it’s part of the record from Missing
Persons in New York.”

“So that’s where he learned it, Roddy—not from me. It’s obvious NYPD did a lot more investigating than we knew about when we went to see that guy Greene at Missing Persons.”

“What about Kenny going missing? Why’d you even mention that?”

“I
had
to. I couldn’t cover that up. Remember, it’s on the record with the NYPD.”

“Okay, Dan. Tell me every word you told Morgan.”

“No problem. But you know, Roddy, that bastard Morgan’s never gonna talk to us together,” Dan mutters. “He’ll question us separately, just to look for contradictions. And he’ll play us off each other, too.”

“That’s what they do,” Roddy says. “And he’ll do it because he’s smart. He’s got a good bullshit meter; and right now, the needle’s jumpin’ sky-high on the thing. Nothing I said passed the smell test. So, take your time and tell me everything the two of you talked about.”

Over the next half hour, Danny recounts the three separate conversations he had with Morgan, since he’s been fully awake and alert.

“Jesus, Dan. You told him too much.”

“Only what was necessary.”

“You went into way too much detail, but that’s the way you are. Especially when you’re nervous.
Detail Dan
, like Angela always says.”

Roddy regrets saying the words the second they pass his lips.

“Ah, come off it,” Danny rasps loudly. His eyes glare and then bore into Roddy.

“Danny, keep it
down
.”

Sweat droplets form on Danny’s forehead.

“If these detectives sense you’re covering up or hiding any shit,” Danny says, “it just opens up more doors for them to knock
on and push through. So I told him as much as I could to look cooperative without saying anything that’d make him think we had anything to do with Kenny disappearing.”