The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams (24 page)

Only me? I looked around
for some kind of answer. Nickie, her face the color of salt, was
trying to get off the chair but she couldn’t move.

“I love her,” said Ski
Mask. “I’d do anything for her. Why do I have to know?”

“I don’t know what-all it
is you know.”

“It
never
should’ve happened. You
never
should’ve stepped
in the middle.”

“In the middle of
what
?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t
understand.”

“Well it’s not coming easy
to me.”

He brought the gun inches
away from my head. “This is
bullshit
.”

“Get out of this house!”
said Genevieve, marching a few steps in his direction. “You prick
bastard, get out of here
now
!” She swiveled to Wooly. “Tell
him to get out of here.”

“Don’t yell at
me
!” said Wooly. “The
fuck’re you yelling at
me
for?”

“Just
tell
him!”

Wooly stepped away, hands
over his ears. “Just shut the fuck up!”

“Stop
moving
!” said Ski Mask. “All of you!
Will you please fucking stand still?”

Genevieve shouted at him
and he shouted at Wooly and Wooly shouted at her all about the same
time. It was perfect hysteria for a good five seconds until Ski
Mask broke it off.

“Enough,” he said, giving
me his full attention again. “This is over. Outside.”

“Outside?”

He gestured to the front
door with his gun. “What else can I do? Outside.”

“I’m not sure if my
insurance covers that.”

He brought the Browning
not six inches away from the side of my head. He wasn’t fucking
around. I started slowly for the door—like he put it, what else can
I do?—and he side-stepped in tandem with me.

We were making nice
progress until Wooly blocked our path.

“This isn’t right,” he
protested. “It
can’t
be right. It’s supposed to be me.”

“What’re you talking
about?” said Ski Mask. “What’s he talking about?”

“I’m telling you,” said
Wooly, “it’s supposed to be
me
.”

“Do we have to hear this
now?” said Genevieve.

“How could it not be me?”
said Wooly “This whole fucking day, how it could it
not
be me?”

“Shut up,” said Ski Mask,
“and get out of the way.”

“Yeah, shut the hell up,”
seconded Genevieve. “Stop
saying
that stuff.”

“Well, I’m saying it,”
said Wooly. “You’re hearing me—I’m saying it.”

“And I’m
tired
of it! All goddamn
day long, I don’t wanna
hear
that shit anymore!”

“Will you calm the fuck
down?” said Wooly.

“Will you both shut
up
!” said Ski
Mask.

“I can’t take this shit,”
said Wooly. “I’ve had it.”

It all happened so
fast—Wooly suddenly bolting across the living room, heading I don’t
know where, I just saw him move, Ski Mask yelling “don’t move!
Stand still!” and whipping around to get an aim on him.

And there it was, the
doomsday moment.

I jumped at him, crashing
into him with my good shoulder, knocking him off balance and
chopping down on his gun hand until I heard the Browning fall
somewhere on the floor.

He came back at me with a
couple of hard punches to my head that made me think I was getting
hit with a hammer. I clamped my arms around him and tried to
wrestle him down, but I had nothing left in my shoulder, no
strength. He spun out of my hold and hit me with a shot that
staggered me back and left me wobbling on my legs like a giraffe on
morphine.

I kept moving backward
best I could, getting the fuck away. He stepped after me, face to
face.

Had we been here before?
Only hours ago, had we faced off just like this?

I tried the same thing I
did then, the same maneuver as before. I threw a right and as he
started to counter with his own punch, I suddenly stopped and went
to kick him in the knee. But it didn’t work. Not this time. Either
my footwork was too slow or he knew it was coming, but his fist
landed long before my leg even got halfway to where it was supposed
to go.

He got me in the shoulder.
He caught me solid in the wounded shoulder. One single channel of
burning pain ran in a steady flow from my arm to my brain. I saw
snow falling, a soft-slow blizzard covering the street where I grew
up as a kid.

I was on the floor. I was
face up and flat on the floor. I saw Ski Mask far away from me. He
was looking for something that also seemed to be on the floor. I
saw him pick the Browning up, I heard him say something that
sounded like
fuck
, I saw him quick-point the gun at me and I saw his finger
curling around the trigger.

It sounded like an
electrical storm was rushing through the house and the dead center
of its thunder core had exploded right in the middle of the living
room.

My first question was, am
I dead? Am I really dead? Does it happen this fast? How come I
didn’t feel the pain of the bullet?

And how come my shoulder
is still killing me?

Somebody was screaming.
The same scream, over and over. Genevieve, definitely Genevieve,
was screaming, “What did you do? What the fuck did you
do?”

I looked up. She was
standing over Ski Mask, staring down at him. I didn’t understand
what was going on until my eyes went across the room. Wooly was
there, back from wherever he’d gone. He was holding his Berretta,
the one he’d had custom finished in cartoon purple. It always
looked like a toy, only now it still had smoke drifting out of its
bore.

“I told you it works,” he
was saying, though he didn’t seem to be talking to anybody in
particular.

I got to my feet. Blood
was seeping out of the wool mask and puddling on the
floor.

“Look at this mess!” said
Genevieve. “Will you look at this
mess
!”

I peeled the mask off,
folding the wet wool up layer by layer, first seeing the bullet
hole that had gone through the jawline. Then the face, not tanned
flesh but pale white condom-colored skin. Then the dark bags under
the eyes and the hair. Not spiked blond. Thick black hair that had
been matted down by the mask.

“Who’s he?” Genevieve
demanded. “What’s he doing here?”

At the moment, Marco Sung
was being dead. Blood was bubbling from the wound and trickling
through his closed lips.

“He’s Georgiana’s
assistant,” said Nickie.

“Well look at the
goop
he’s leaving.”
Genevieve whirled to Wooly. “Get me some towels! Get me some paper
towels!”

Wooly didn’t move. He was
still holding the Berretta, still saying, “I told you it works,
I
told
you it
works,” saying it to nobody and to everybody.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

CHAPTER 9

THERE’S A LOT OF DEATH
GOING AROUND

BLINDSIDED

We were back at the
village hall, in the same conference room where I’d first seen
Wooly, saw him smash a water pitcher and two glasses with a flying
chair and get tackled by the Hidden Lake cops, heard him screaming
to the world that “the glass is half
full
, motherfucker!”

Memories.

Today we were here with
Alex Tarkashian, watching him set his laptop up. Man was having a
day for himself. He’d taken Georgiana Copely’s statement a few
hours before and was doing the courtesy of letting us see it.
Meanwhile, Gary Bogash had been apprehended in the wee hours by
Suffolk County police, still trying to flee in the stolen nurse’s
car.

“He was always too blond
for me,” said Alex. “Way too blond for my taste.”

Bogash had just been
charged and sent off to Riverhead—a good thing of course—but the
business had left Alex’s office a mess. A real sight, he said.
Since police headquarters was located in the village hall building,
he’d walked us over here for the screening.

“Hell of a day,” he said
as Wooly, Genevieve, Nickie and I got settled around the table.
“Though yesterday, Jesus, nothing compares to yesterday. Remember
the Bush administration? Yesterday was like that. Who’d guess that
eight years could last so long?”

He’d had some good news
for Wooly—in addition to Wooly still being alive. No charges would
be filed in the shooting of Marco Sung. Wooly’s house had clearly
been invaded, the threat of violence was slap-in-the-face real and
he’d fought it off with a licensed weapon. He was in the
clear.

But that didn’t seem to
bring Wooly much comfort. He sat there looking bristly and somber,
even a little defeated.

Alex was ready. He hit
play. We all peered in at the screen

Georgiana was sitting in a
nondescript room, looking like absolute shit. She was drained and
gray, staring into the camera with the turned-in eyes of the blind.
Or the dead.

She was sharing a
microphone on the table in front of her with a man. Her attorney, a
senior-partner type who looked like a highly paid professor of
mortuary science—if such affluent academics exist—and he was
decidedly not happy to be here,

A puffy young woman sat on
Georgiana’s other side. She wore goggle-like Elton John glasses and
a head of black hair in a beyond-caring mishmash. She was
Georgiana’s new assistant, recruited early in the morning,
according to Alex. Marco had already been replaced.

On the tape we heard Alex
run through the formalities: date and time, location, those
present. The attorney, Eric Rivers, leaned into the mic.

Rivers:
On behalf on my client, I feel duty bound to note
that she came in of her own volition.

Alex:
Appreciate it.

Rivers:
And that her interpretation of recent events is
being given on a voluntary basis.

Alex:
It’s just for the record. We’re just trying to get a full
picture of what happened.

Rivers:
As long as we all understand.

Alex:
Ms. Copely, are you ready?

Georgiana:
I won’t cry. Please don’t expect me to
cry.

Her voice was spacey and
shaky and barely formed. It was like she hadn’t spoken to anyone in
eight months.

Georgiana:
I have full cause to cry, but I won’t. I simply
won’t.

Alex:
That’s okay. Two days ago, Ms. Copely, on June 20, you had a
conversation with Marco Sung, correct? A particularly…difficult
conversation?

Georgiana:
He wanted to know why someone would want to talk
to me about my health. Mr. McShane, Quinn McShane, had called and
said he needed to see me about my health. Marco came to me, he said
I’m sorry, I don’t understand, why would someone suddenly want to
talk to you about that?

Alex:
And you told him.

Georgiana:
I told him the truth. I told him the tumor in my
brain had entered a phase of rapid growth. I told him I had months
to live, less than a year.

Alex:
He didn’t k now that before?

Georgiana:
I didn’t want anyone to know.

Alex:
How did he take it?

Georgiana:
Badly. He wept. He became very upset. I went
to…comfort him, but he kept punching at himself, hugging himself
and punching his arms with his fists. He was, excuse the
expression, he was blindsided.

“Excuse
this
,” said Wooly. “Ya
fucking scooch.”

Alex:
He went out that night?

Georgiana:
We had a number of talks that day. He kept saying
he felt cheated, he felt angry—though he didn’t know who or what he
was angry at. Then, yes, he went out that night.

Alex:
We know he fired shots at McShane that night. The gun he
used, the Browning, it’s yours?

Rivers:
Legally registered to Ms. Copely.

Georgiana:
Everyone has a gun.

“Too many idiots,” said
Wooly, “spoil the broth.”

Genevieve shushed
him.

Georgiana:
I knew something was going on when he came back.
He was shaking very hard. I didn’t have to touch him to know. I
could hear him shaking all over. But he wouldn’t tell me what was
wrong.