Tick Tock (27 page)

“WAS IT HIS HEART?” Apt finally said.

“No. It looks like he committed suicide. He had some sort of pill hidden in his mouth when he was arrested. At least that’s what the police are saying.”

Carl thought about that. Lawrence dying alone. His friend. It broke his heart. If only he could have been there.

“Carl, are you still there?”

“Yes,” Apt said, hiding the sadness howling through him. “What now?” he said.

“First off, in case this is being recorded, I would like to state that I, Allen Duques, am in no way complicit with any illegal activities, but am merely in the process of dispensing the will of the Lawrence M. Berger estate, of which I am sole executor.”

“Whatever,” Apt said. “Where’s the money?”

“Yes, of course. In front of you, down the hallway, is my den. Do you see it?”

Apt crossed the room and pushed through some French doors.

“I’m there.”

“Excellent. On the leather couch are two valises.”

“The black suitcases?” Apt said, spotting them.

“Yes.”

Apt opened them without checking for wires. The thought of Duques blowing up his anal-retentive-designed interior of his mansion was laughable. Inside the bags were hundred-dollar bills. Lots and lots and lots of them. Stacks upon stacks.

“I apologize for the cumbersome number of bills. I would have liked to wire it to the account of your choice, but I had a visit today from the authorities that makes that extremely impractical. Lawrence actually anticipated as much and had me make these arrangements as a precaution. I believe there’s a note for you in the bag on the left.”

Apt opened it and slid out an expensive stationery card. Carl smiled at Lawrence’s beautiful handwriting in his signature green ink.

“Mr. Berger wanted you to be happy, Carl,” Duques said in his ear. “He always spoke of you so fondly.”

Apt lowered the phone to wipe a tear away with his thumb before tucking the note back in the money bag. He was beyond touched. The big guy had done the right thing after all. His good buddy had more than taken care of him. How could he have doubted it for even a second?

“Carl, before I forget. Mr. Berger left a message for you. He said, and I quote, you needn’t bother with the last name on the list. End quote. Whatever that means. He said you’d understand.”

Apt thought about that. That didn’t sound right. If anything, Lawrence had been
most
excited by the last name on his list. Did the Big L have a change of heart?

“You sure about that?” Apt said.

“He was quite emphatic about it. Consider your services rendered in full. Enjoy your reward. You’ve earned it. As this will be our final communication, it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

“You, too, Allen. I have just one question.”

“What’s that?”

“Where do you keep the keys to the S Sixty-five?”

“My new car?” the lawyer sputtered. “Why? That has nothing to do with these arrangements.”

“I thought we’d make a new arrangement.”

“I don’t understand.”

“How’s this?” Apt said. “I get the S Sixty-five and you don’t come home to a smoking crater where this palace used to be.”

There was a short silence.

“They’re hanging on the back door to the butler’s pantry,” Duques said and hung up.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Apt said to the darkness as he backtracked toward the kitchen.

THERE WAS A LARGE CROWD waiting out in front of the Sugar Bowl when I rolled past around eleven. A live band was playing tonight. It was the last concert of the summer, I remembered from a flyer. An up-and-coming band out of Ireland called the Gilroy Stompers was being touted as the next U2.

I thought Mary Catherine might like to go for a goof.

I parked and went inside the Bennett compound. The tiny house was still and quiet. I found Seamus asleep in front of the TV. Instead of waking him, I tossed one of the girls’ pink Snuggies over him, then took out my phone and snapped a picture of him. I couldn’t resist.

I peeked inside the door of the girls’ room and smiled. There was more bed in the room than floor space. I stood for a moment, watching them sleep. The sight of them lying so peacefully warmed me in the way only being a
parent can. While my day might have sucked, they’d managed to tack on another hopefully happy memory or two, grown another day older.

Who knows? Maybe they’d even grown a little stronger, a little more capable of dealing with this chaotic world they would one day inherit. I hoped so. I had a feeling they were going to need all the help they could get, the way things were going.

Kids could be challenging, oftentimes a downright pain in the ass, but in rare moments they made you see that maybe you were trying after all. Maybe you really were doing the best you could.

Stoked from my warm-and-fuzzy moment, I went into the kitchen, searching for a beer. I was popping open a can of Miller High Life when Mary Catherine came in from the back porch, a book and a blanket in her hands.

A smile started and spread wider and wider over my face as I stood staring at her. Beer foam spilled over onto my hand, and I kept smiling. I don’t think I can properly describe how happy seeing her made me.

She was tan and glowing and looked fabulous.

“You look… fabulous,” I said.

“Yes, I do, Mike,” she said. “Is that so surprising?”

“No. Fortuitous, is how I’d put it.”

“For who?”

I was speechless for the second time that night. I was really losing my touch.

“Hey, you want to hear some rock music at the Sugar Bowl?”

Mary smiled.

I smiled back.

“You wake up Seamus,” she said, rolling her Irish eyes. “I’ll get my flip-flops.”

THE SAFE HOUSE APT had rented on 29th Street between Lexington and Third was a small brick town house that actually had a one-car garage. After he coded open the box on the sidewalk, he drove the S165 in and closed the gate behind him. He left the convertible running as he grabbed the money-filled suitcases piled on the front seat. This wouldn’t take long.

In the back of the loft-style space’s bedroom closet, he took out a North Face knapsack. Inside were several driver’s licenses and passports with his picture on them.

He’d paid a hundred thousand dollars for them to a Canadian counterfeiter who’d just gotten out of jail. They were excellent forgeries, virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. He’d picked up a few things from the Intel people he used to run with in his other life. Names of folks who could get you things. Guns. Documents. Whatever. It was all about the networking.

As he shouldered the bag of documents, he glanced at the bulging garment bag above it. In it were the clothing and equipment and research he’d done to prepare for his final hit. He stared at it for a second, regretfully. All that recon for nothing. A shame, he thought, heading outside. Oh, well. Next life.

Back inside the garage, he sat for a moment in the front seat of the S165, thinking. He’d been planning on heading down to New Orleans, where a pretty girl he’d gone to City College with was living, but now he wasn’t so sure. He’d stirred up one hell of a hornet’s nest here with all these killings. What if the news had gotten to her?

He finally decided to ditch that idea and head down the coast to Key West for some extended R & R. Dip his toe into the Gulf of Mexico until he figured out his next move. With the bulging suitcases beside him now, he could certainly take his time.

He hit the garage door and cranked the Benz. He sat in the car, listening to the purring thunder of its engine, as he stared out at the open road. It was a warm and lovely night. A haze hovered along the edges of the street lamps down the slope of 29th Street. It was one of those magical moments in New York when it feels like it’s all yours: the buildings, the streets, all of it built for you, waiting on you, pivoting on you.

He kept sitting there. What the heck was he doing? What was he waiting for? He was done now. Time to hit the road and see exactly how free $8 million could make him. How good he could make himself feel.

But he didn’t go. Instead, he shut off the car and hit the garage door down and went back inside. When he came out again he was holding the garment bag. He laid it down on the front seat on top of the money and stared at it.

He was probably being foolish, but he just couldn’t leave things like this. Fuck what the lawyer, Duques, had said about Lawrence’s having changed his mind. He knew what Lawrence would have wanted him to do. He understood the big man better than anyone. Maybe better than the guy understood himself.

Lawrence had done so much for him. It wasn’t about the money. He realized it never had been. This was about friendship. About faith, respect. Lawrence had been the father he never had. You couldn’t put a price tag on that.

Besides, he thought as he opened the garage door again and revved the engine.

He always completed the mission.

He unzipped the bag and took out the MapQuest sheet for the final target and turned on the Mercedes’s nav system.

Point of start?
the screen asked.

Manhattan,
he typed.

Point of destination?

Apt’s fingers hovered above the keyboard for a moment and then he typed it:

Breezy Point, Queens.

IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER MIDNIGHT when Carl Apt drove out from underneath the second-to-last stop of the A subway line in Rockaway, Queens.

A sign said the name of the stop was Beach 105th Street, but there was no beach in sight. There was just a razor-wire fence outside some sort of industrial plant. Some ant colony high-rises, an ill-kept ball field.

It got nicer the farther he drove south. Swept sidewalks. Neat lawns. Fireflies glowing beneath leafy shade trees. After a while, it flattened out the way it does near the water, sky suddenly everywhere.

The narrow side streets he started to pass had little guard booth arms blocking car traffic and then that was it. The road just stopped. In front of him beyond a spray-painted guardrail lay the dunes, the silvery bulge and fall of waves, the open sea.

He made a U-turn, checking the GPS. When he was
close, he spotted a closed IGA supermarket and pulled into its empty lot. Around the back of it near its loading dock, he tucked the Merc beside the beat-to-shit rusted trailer of an 18-wheeler.

He put the top up on the convertible before he opened the bag and got changed. Once dressed, he took an electric razor from the bottom of the bag and plugged it into the cigarette lighter with an adapter he’d bought at a Radio Shack.

Done, he clicked the razor off and checked himself in the rearview. He had a Mohawk now. He quickly slid on his aviator sunglasses and his vintage army jacket.

He was dressed as Travis Bickle, the anti-hero from Martin Scorsese’s seventies classic movie
Taxi Driver
. Played by Robert DeNiro, Bickle, like Apt, was a soldier turned idealistic assassin.

It was elaborate fantasyland stuff, but that was just the kind of whimsy Lawrence really enjoyed.

For Detective Michael Bennett’s death, Lawrence had chosen his most beloved New York killer of all.

The fiber-optic camera was now in the lining of his jacket. As usual, he was filming everything. The entire digital tape, including this last scene, the grand finale, would be going into a FedEx box as soon as he was done. David Berger, Lawrence’s famous, saintly, genius musician brother out in California, would receive it the day after tomorrow.

Apt got out of the car. Sticking to the shadows, he hurried
down Rockaway Point Boulevard until he got to Spring Street, Bennett’s block. He started counting addresses after he made the left. The tiny, quirky, not-very-stable-looking houses were almost on top of one another, but he could actually hear the nearby surf.

He found himself liking the vibe of the place. As with all good beachside spots, there was something old about it, timeless. It seemed like a way station, an outpost at the end of things.

When he came to Bennett’s place, he crossed the street and crouched in the shadow between two houses opposite and sat staring.

All the lights were off. Was Bennett asleep, dreaming sweet dreams after a long day of failing to catch him? It was looking like it.

He waited for almost half an hour. When he crossed the dark street, he saw that from its neatly painted porch rail an American flag was flying. Apt shook his head. Mike, Mike, he thought. Don’t you know you’re supposed to bring Old Glory in at night?

The cluttered back deck was baffling, like a Toys “R” Us fire sale. Blow-up air mattresses, water guns, a rusty bicycle. Careful not to knock anything over, he crept up the steps and peeked in the back-door window. A Reagan-era fridge, a massive table with breakfast bowls, spoons, and folded napkins all set out for the morning. He counted at least a dozen settings. What was up?

He was bent, scrub-picking the door lock, when he
heard something behind him. The air mattress by the stairs had moved. Had the wind knocked it over? But there was no wind.

Then something cold and hard slammed down on top of his head, and he felt his legs give out and the deck rushing toward his face.

HIS SKULL ON FIRE and his vision blurring, Apt pulled himself up onto his knees.

He wiped his eyes. There was a kid in front of him on the top step of the deck. He had an aluminum baseball bat on his shoulder. He was Hispanic, maybe ten or eleven, wearing Yankees pajamas.

“Who are you?” the kid said, brandishing the bat. “I saw you come past my window. You’re a Flaherty, aren’t you? Why the hell can’t you people leave us alone?”

Apt put up his hands as the kid feinted with the bat. He couldn’t believe it. He’d come this far and some ten-or eleven-year-old punk had taken him out? With a bat? What kind of crazy father was Bennett, anyway?