The Barbed-Wire Kiss (31 page)

“I guessed.”

“Not that I care, but you should be aware of possible repercussions down the line. Now for the most important thing. You told Nolan the other man was Mickey Dunleavy.”

“It was. We exchanged fire, I missed. He went out the front. He had a car hidden in the trees, but I didn’t get a good look at it. I fired twice, might have taken out a window. Either of you have a cigarette?”

Wesniak looked at him for a moment, then over at Eagleman. He came away from the door, took a pack of Winstons from his shirt pocket, shook one out. Harry took it. Eagleman fished out a lighter, and Harry leaned forward, put the cigarette to his lips, realized his hand was shaking.

He got the cigarette lit and sat back. The smoke was bitter, stale.

“They found a car,” Wesniak said. “In Freehold. It had been stolen earlier in the day. Holes in the back window but no blood on the seats. Looks like you didn’t get him.”

“Too bad.”

“I feel the same way. Dunleavy and I, we’ve got a history.”

“I heard. He’s an errand boy for the Scarpettis now. Did you know that?”

“There were rumors. We’d been watching him, off and on, to see where he landed. More a personal thing than an official investigation. We’d heard about him and the Scarpettis. We didn’t know for sure.”

“It’s for sure.”

“We’re looking for him right now. We’ll find him. He’s the one who shot Fox?”

Harry inhaled smoke. “Yes.”

“So I’m guessing that’s the friend whose name you wouldn’t give us. The one you were protecting.”

“Yes.”

“Hell of a job protecting him,” Eagleman said.

Wesniak shot him a glance that silenced him, turned back to Harry.

“I won’t belabor the obvious,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you that if you had given us his name, we could have done something for him, prevented this from happening.”

“Done something? Like what? Arrest him?”

“He’d have been a damn sight better off than he is at the moment. I think we need to get everything out on the table now. Do you want a lawyer?”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet.”

“Will I be?”

“Depends on what you tell me.”

Harry nodded, took the cigarette from his mouth, looked at it. He let it burn as he talked. He told them about Fallon, about Bobby. He never mentioned Cristina or his visit to Wiley’s house or the knapsack.

Wesniak nodded occasionally but said nothing. When Harry was finished, the ash on his cigarette was near the filter.

“So they just showed up here tonight?” Wesniak said. “Out of the blue? Looking for Fox?”

“They were waiting when we got back.”

“Why would they want to kill him if he’d already paid them what he owed?”

“I don’t know.”

“That beating you took. You got that when you delivered the money?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To teach me a lesson, I guess, for getting involved.”

“What was Rego doing in the backyard?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they sent him around to watch the door. I knew he was out there, though. When the shooting started, I guessed he’d come in through the back. I ran to meet him and he threw down on me. I had Perna’s gun.”

Wesniak nodded, stood up. He stretched, walked to the window, and looked out into the yard.

“Your friend,” he said. “He was the beginning of all this?”

“For me.”

“You have any dealings with Fallon or any of these people before?”

“Never.”

Wesniak rubbed his neck, turned.

“You two go back to the car,” he said. “I need to talk to Nolan for a few minutes.”

“What about the cuffs?” Eagleman said.

“Leave ’em off.”

Harry stood, took a final pull on the cigarette, dropped it in the sink and ran water on it. Eagleman gestured at him, and Harry followed him out of the kitchen. The men in the living room watched as they walked past and out the front door.

There were ten cars parked at various angles on the lawn, most of them with emergency lights flashing on roofs or dashboards. There was a county crime scene van in the side yard, and a technician was dusting the door handles of the El Camino.

Eagleman led him down the driveway, lights reflecting off the sides of the cars. Radios squawked around them. To the east, the sky was purple with the coming dawn.

A half hour later, he sat in a hard plastic chair in a break room Wesniak had commandeered at the State Police barracks in Holmdel. The knees and calves of his jeans were stiff with blood.

There was a refrigerator, microwave, and coffee station on one side of the room. A handwritten note taped to the refrigerator said: clean up your own mess.

Eagleman sat down across from Harry at a folding table, slid a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee toward him.

“There’s tea there too,” Eagleman said. “Help yourself.”

“This is fine.”

Harry sipped the coffee. It was bitter and burnt, and the milk and sugar did little to conceal a faint chemical taste. He put the cup down and didn’t touch it again.

Wesniak came into the room, shut the door behind him. Harry looked up.

“Fox is still in surgery,” Wesniak said. “That’s all I know. I called that number you gave me in North Carolina, talked to his wife.”

“And?”

“She’s going to try to get a flight up today. She asked about you.”

Wesniak pulled up a chair, sat down.

“I got the impression,” he said, “that she wasn’t as surprised as she should have been about what happened. Why would that be?”

“She knows he owed people money, that’s all. She didn’t know what it was for.”

“Sure of that?”

“I don’t know what he told her or didn’t tell her, but that was always my impression.”

“I hope she gives us the same story when we talk to her.”

“Leave her alone. She’s not involved with this at all.”

“It seems to me that one of the problems here is that you’re always looking out for other people’s welfare when you should be worried about your own. Under other circumstances, that quality might be something to be admired. Right now, all it does is make me think you’re still not telling me everything.”

“You know all there is to know.”

“Is that right? You want to tell us why you were sneaking around Cortez’s apartment? There’s a woman named Pettimore there who’s wondering what happened to you. Apparently she was expecting a phone call.”

“You dog, you,” Eagleman said.

“You talked to her?” Harry said.

“We did,” Wesniak said. “I got the sense that she was trying to protect you in some half-assed fashion.”

“I was looking for Cortez, just the way I told you. I went by his apartment, she let me in. I didn’t find anything. And I didn’t tell her anything.”

“You miss the job that much?” Wesniak said. “You need to go around playing detective?”

“You find Dunleavy?”

“Still looking. Spring Lake police picked Fallon up about an hour ago at our request. We’ll be going down there to talk to him, along with someone from the OC office, try and rattle his cage a little bit. Chances are they won’t be able to hold him very long, though. If we find Dunleavy, we’ll try and squeeze him on the Fallon angle.”

“Never happen.”

“We’ll see.”

“If you want something to nail Dunleavy with, dig those bullets out of my floor.”

“What?”

“The bullets from Dunleavy’s gun. Match them against the ones you took out of Cortez and his cousin.”

“Why should we do that?”

“Because the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. If it wasn’t Dunleavy who killed them, it was one of the other two, maybe Rego. Check his gun too. It was the perfect way for Fallon to work it.”

“Maybe I’m missing something here.”

“It’s simple. I should have guessed it from the beginning. Fallon was overextended. He owed people money. So he set up Bobby and Jimmy Cortez. He got them to front him money, then take some heroin off his hands. They set up their own deal to get rid of it, through Cortez’s cousin. Fallon had someone—probably Dunleavy—follow Cortez when he met the cousin to make the transfer. Dunleavy took the money and the heroin and killed them both. Then someone got Cortez’s car from his house, loaded the bodies in the trunk, and ditched the car so it would look like he left town.”

“You have any proof of that?”

Harry shook his head. “But think about it. It’s the only way it makes sense. Fallon got his front money, plus the money Dunleavy took off the cousin, plus the heroin, which he could sell again. Then he put the squeeze on Bobby to pay him for the heroin he lost. It would have worked out perfectly. Fallon gets paid three times for one deal, and when it’s over he still has the same amount of heroin he started with. Bobby was an amateur, he didn’t know what he was doing. It would have been easy.”

“It might make sense, but that doesn’t make it true.”

“Check the bullets.”

Wesniak looked at Eagleman. He nodded, got up and left the room.

“Look at it from Fallon’s perspective,” Harry said. “Bobby and Cortez weren’t connected to anyone, neither was the cousin as far as he knew. If somebody killed them both and set up Bobby, no one would come looking to even the score. It was perfect.”

“What about the cousin’s people? The ones he was buying for? What if they came looking for their money?”

“That was a chance Fallon had to take. But there was nothing that tied him to it, except Bobby. Fallon was twice removed from the deal at that point.”

“If we ever go to trial, you’ll have to testify about your part in all this.”

“I will.”

“And these other things you’re telling me. If your friend lives through this, if he recovers, we’re going to have to act on it.”

“He was shot in the head. Even if he lives …”

Wesniak nodded, stood up, walked over to the coffee station.

“You could be right about all this,” he said. “I say ‘could be.’ We’ll find out soon. In the meantime, you’re not going to be charged.”

“Why not?”

Wesniak poured coffee.

“As far as the shootings go, it looks like it happened pretty much the way you said. Nolan was right, self-defense is the only way to read it. You were facing armed intruders, and none of the weapons were yours. Strange that Perna would bring two guns with him, though. I wonder why he thought he needed both.”

“I don’t know. So you’re letting me walk out of here just like that?”

“Would you rather I arrest you?”

Harry watched him.

“It’s not like I have a lot of choice.” He brought the coffee back to the table and sat down. “If we find Dunleavy and he tells us a different story about what happened there, then that’s another issue.”

“He’s long gone by now.”

Wesniak sipped the coffee, sniffed at it, pushed it away.

“Maybe, maybe not. But I promise you this: It may take a while, but we’ll get him.”

“I guess there’s always a first time, right?”

“You’re tired. It’s been a rough night. I’ve been trying to keep that in mind. But don’t say things to me you’ll regret later. If I were you, I’d see about getting a place to stay tonight. You won’t be able to get back into your house for a couple of days, maybe longer.”

“I’ll find a place.”

“Good.” Wesniak stood up. “Lou will drive you back to your house if you want. That way you can at least get your car. I’ll call ahead and clear it.”

“That’s good of you.”

“You’re something, Harry, you really are. You should be thanking me instead of busting my hump. You’re lucky I’m letting you go.”

“Why? Because you want me out there on the street until you find Dunleavy? Because you want to make sure you get him this time, the way you didn’t the last?”

“That’s part of it.”

“You were thinking the same way about me when we first met, weren’t you? You thought I was like him.”

“At first, maybe. I was wrong. Dunleavy is a different story.”

“Why?”

“He used to work for me. His father and I came up together. His father was a good trooper. After he died, I helped his son get into the outfit. He told me it was his dream, to follow his old man. But I was wrong. He wasn’t like his old man at all.”

“You were the one who went after him. When you found out what was going on, that he was robbing drug dealers.”

“I had a responsibility. I helped train him.”

“You did a good job.”

Wesniak moved toward the door.

“Like I said, Harry, you’re tired.”

“Maybe so, but not too tired to see what’s going on.”

“And what’s that?”

“You want me out there because you hope he’ll take another shot at me. You’re not arresting me because I’m no good to you in custody. Right now I’m the only connection you’ve got to Dunleavy, aren’t I? You want to use me to get to him.”

Wesniak looked at him for a long moment.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” he said. “And that’s the last time I’m going to say that. But we’re through here. You’re free to go. If you want, Lou will give you a ride back to your house. If not, you can call a cab. It doesn’t matter to me. As far as I’m concerned, Harry, you’re on your own.”

He turned down Eagleman’s offer of a ride back to Colts Neck. Instead, he had him drop him off at an Exxon station on the Parkway. Harry got two dollars in change from the Pakistani attendant, took it to a pay phone near the vending machines. It was full daylight now, but the receiver was still wet with dew.

He fed change into the phone, called information for the hospital number. He got through to the night nursing supervisor, who told him she was about to go off duty but would see what she could find out. He dropped another twenty cents into the phone while he waited. When she came back on the line, she told him Bobby was still in surgery. He thanked her and hung up.

Beside him, the soda machine hummed. He waited a moment, then dropped two quarters into the phone and dialed another number.

She answered on the second ring.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Harry,” she said, the edge of panic in her voice. “What’s going on? The police were here. They took Edward. What’s happening?”

“I’ll tell you everything later. Has Dunleavy been around? Have you seen him?”