“Neither of you guys is in any shape to drive,” Paul said, “and especially not in this weather.”
“This is police business, Paul.”
He flipped open a shield at me. “And I’m an assistant State’s Attorney in Windham County, Vermont. I told you I was a lawyer, but you never asked what kind. You probably assumed I was an ambulance chaser?”
He was right. That’s exactly what I’d assumed. “You’re out of your jurisdiction,” was all I managed to say.
“And you’re a drunk sixty-year-old man who hasn’t worn a badge in almost thirty years. Besides, I grew up in Vermont and was raised to drive in snow like this with my eyes closed. I’ve seen how downstate New Yorkers drive in this soup and it’s not pretty.”
McKenna opened his mouth to say something, but he either forgot what he had to say or thought better of it. Then the valet pulled up to the front entrance with the detective’s car. Paul Stern handed the kid a fiver and went straight for the driver’s seat.
“In or out, gentlemen? Come on.”
We both got in, me up front with Paul Stern and McKenna in the back.
“Hang on,” Paul shouted and hit the gas. The Crown Vic held a pretty steady line as we drove down the long drive and through the front gates. “Just tell me where I’m going and I’ll get us there.”
I gave him directions how to go south and east, but once we got off Chicken Valley Road and onto 107, it was a total slog.
After about five minutes and two hundred yards of torturous progress on 107, McKenna seemed to regain some brain function and lose all his patience. “Fuck this! Moe, hit that switch and that switch there,” he said, leaning over the seat and pointing at the dash.
When I did as he asked, the wailing siren kicked on, lights embedded in the grill strobed ahead of us and a bar of like-colored lights mounted to the back window flashed behind us. Now we were cooking and Paul seemed to know exactly what he was doing at the wheel.
“A highway patrol unit?” I asked.
“It’s what they gave me. Good thing too.”
“Call the Suffolk cops,” I said, turning back to McKenna, reciting Jimmy Palumbo’s address to him. “Tell them to close off his block, but not to approach him. He’s a big, strong motherfucker and he’s got a carry permit. I know he carries a Sig 9mm and probably has other weapons too. No need to get anybody hurt here.”
“Jimmy Palumbo, the guy who played for the Jets?” McKenna puzzled.
“Him. Just make the call and remind them to have their marine unit in West Babylon Creek at Santapogue Point. I just hope he hasn’t split yet.”
“What’s that ex-jock got to do with this?”
“Everything,” I said. “Everything.”
I listened as McKenna made the call. Things were going fine until he said the part about them not approaching the house. Cops are more territorial than Siamese fighting fish and they don’t want to hear a cop from a neighboring county telling them how to handle business inside their own bailiwick. Hell, when I was on the job, we didn’t like guys from the next precinct over even setting foot on our turf. McKenna wasn’t exactly in the best of shape to begin with and he was a bad drunk: one of those guys who had it all under control when they were dry, but who seemed to completely lose it after a few drinks. And at that moment he was fighting a losing battle with his Suffolk County counterpart on the other end of the phone. I waved to get his attention.
“Hold on a second,” McKenna slurred, covering the phone with his palm. “What?”
“What’s going on?”
“The police boat’s in position, but they want to send in the freakin’ troops. You know, in Suffolk they don’t get to use the SWAT team too often except to break up loud summer parties in the Hamptons. What am I going to say to him? He’s pissed off enough as it is.”
I thought for a few seconds. “Tell him we think Sashi’s still alive.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Just tell him that. They’re not gonna storm the Bastille if there’s a chance she’s alive.”
“You don’t think she really is, do you?”
“No,” I said, “not for a second.”
“ They’re not going to believe it either. They may be Suffolk County yahoos, but even they can read papers and watch TV.”
“Tell him whatever the fuck you have to to convince him we’ve got new evidence that she’s alive. Have your chief call their chief, whatever.”
I needed to talk to Jimmy Palumbo and the only way to make sure the cops didn’t go in guns blazing was to convince them he still had Sashi with him and that she was still alive. He was our only hope of finding her remains. The cruel irony of having to pretend she was alive to find her dead wasn’t lost on any of us and we all bowed our heads there for a second. Then McKenna shrugged his shoulders and repeated what I said. After another few seconds, he got off the phone.
“Fuck me if it didn’t work. That asshole captain changed his tune as soon as I said we think the kid might still be alive.”
“No one wants to go in shooting if a little kid’s around. Would you?”
“Well, we stalled them for now, but they won’t wait forever.”
“It won’t be forever, just another couple of minutes.”
I flicked off the siren and lights a block before we turned south off Montauk Highway. Without being told to, Paul slowed the car down. Unlike Main Street, the streets in this part of Babylon were really slick and had yet to be plowed, though the police cruisers that had preceded us left several sets of tire tracks cut into the otherwise pristine layer of snow. About three blocks before Palumbo’s street, I told Paul to pull over.
“What are you planning on doing?”
“What if I told you I had to take a leak?”
“With all due respect, I’d say you were full of shit. Forget it.”
“Yeah,” McKenna agreed, “you’re not going to get yourself killed on my watch.”
“It’s not your county and it’s not your watch. I led Palumbo right to John Tierney and gave him more than enough money to get away. You said it yourself, McKenna, the cops won’t wait forever. If they kill Palumbo, we’ll never know what happened to Sashi’s body. I’m not risking it. I think he’ll talk to me.”
“I don’t like it.”
Paul agreed with the detective even as he slowed to a ten-mile-an-hour crawl to take a left turn. I didn’t put it up for further debate or a vote. I simply opened the door and rolled out of the Crown Vic into a drift. Ten miles an hour was about eight miles an hour too many. The snow cushioned my landing a little bit, a very little bit, and I banged down pretty good, the breath knocked out of my lungs as if a house had fallen on me. But the adrenaline kicked in again and I was up and running. Not very steadily or fast, my bad knee killing me, but running nonetheless. I didn’t look back and I didn’t think ahead. I just knew I had to get to Palumbo before the cops did.
The wind was more ferocious down here on the Great South Bay and it whipped the snow up so bad that it was hard to see more than half a block in front of me or hear anything more than the wind’s angry howl or my own labored breathing. I cut a parallel path to Jimmy’s street, but in the opposite direction. Up ahead of me and to my right, I could see the eerie soft glow of the cops’ colored lights reflecting off the blowing snowflakes. Wisely, they had set up choke points on two of the three north-south roads leading away from this stubby thumb of land that jutted slightly into the Great South Bay. They were far enough away so that Jimmy wouldn’t have been able to see their lights from his house, but if he tried to drive north from where his house was located to one of the main roads, he’d run smack into a wall of cops.
Now that I had moved far enough in the opposite direction, I changed my course from parallel to perpendicular. The cops hadn’t bothered blocking off the most easterly of the three north-south roads because there was no way for Jimmy to access it by car or on foot. To reach this last road, he’d have to swim the narrow channel I was now standing in front of. And unless human evolution took a sudden, unexpected turn and I miraculously sprouted wings, swimming was exactly what I would have to do. Problem was, I wasn’t much of a swimmer under the best conditions and these were pretty fucking far away from the best conditions. Like I said, I hadn’t thought ahead. I knew the channel was here, that I’d have to get across it and another one like it to reach Jimmy’s house. I guess I hoped I’d find a ladder or something so I wouldn’t have to go in the water, but there was no ladder, no something, and I still had to get across. It looked like I was about to join the Polar Bear Club and I had begun untying my shoes when I heard a loud knocking, wood against wood.