35
The barren night reminded Decker of funerals, specifically of cops murdered while doing the job. Those left behind-the grieving parents, the prostrate spouses, and the bewildered children-had a sameness to their wretched faces like the sameness to the color black. In Judaism, Torah is light and light is God. Hell wasn’t fire and brimstone and devils and torture. Hell was an abyss without sensation, without end.
Slashes of rain slapped Decker’s face. Without the protection of the plastic bags, his shoes and socks had become soaked, but that was of little consequence. There were other things on his mind-Chaim… Donatti… Merrin… Rina and the children. As he neared the back door, he felt adrenaline kick in, his senses heighten.
Opening the door a fraction of an inch. Playing mental games to ward off that terrifying fear of a gun’s bore suddenly popping into his face. Only his heartbeat and breathing for company.
A few more inches, then Decker made the commitment. He slipped inside the warehouse and took refuge, hiding behind a stack of three-foot square boxes. Once again, surrounded by phantasmagoric nothingness: by violence lurking behind an eerie stillness. His inhalations were deep. He was sweating profusely, and salt bathed his eyes. He wiped them with the back of his gloves, still wet from rain. He peeked over the edge of the cardboard stack and peered through the Walther’s scope, but saw only aisle after aisle of cartons and boxes. Nowhere could he spy Donatti or the platform on which they had been squatting. With no specific landmarks, he was disoriented. He only knew that he was in the rear of the warehouse.
With nothing to go on, he figured he might as well go for the action and head toward the lit room in front. Hopefully, Donatti-if he did spot him-would look before he shot.
Provided he wasn’t after Decker.
Jonathan’s words: He could be setting you up.
Donatti had had ample opportunity to pop him, and had yet to exercise the option. But Chris was a pro and picked his scenery like a stage director choosing his set designs. The opportunity had never been better: a headfirst, out-of-town cop trying to rescue his brother-in-law, getting shot in the cross fire.
Again he scoped the place through the infrared lens, scanning the aisles for anything in motion.
Everything appeared inert.
He plotted a path, one that had lots of big cartons and crates to hide behind with plenty of escape routes. Of course, if he could hide behind walls of cardboard, so could a sniper. But maybe they were too busy guarding the door and watching their own asses to worry about an itinerant cop.
He inched out from his current position and gave a last-minute check to his surroundings. As quickly and quietly as his shoes would allow-he had to tiptoe because his sneakers squeaked-he started toward the other side of the warehouse.
First attempt, he hotfooted it about fifty feet before taking shelter behind a pallet.
Second try, he slithered out another hundred feet, then crouched behind a forklift to reevaluate.
Third time, he found a niche in back of a six-foot-high pallet.
His face was hot and wet, and large drops of sweat fell off his nose. His armpits were soaked; his clothes smelled rancid. His breathing was fast and shallow. His rib cage hurt from tension and his oxygen-starved inhalations.
A piece of concrete whizzed by his ear, landing on the ground and breaking into little tippy-tappy noises. Decker whipped around but saw nothing.
Donatti.
But where had it come from?
Decker sucked up oxygen from the frigid air and tried to get a fix on the direction of the projectile. He zigzagged in and out of merchandise, until another stone whizzed by his head.
He veered to the left, then scoped out the new area.
He still didn’t see any platform or staircase.
Darting from aisle to aisle, from box to box and carton to carton. He paused a moment, leaning against a pallet marked COMPUTER DESK AND HUTCH. FRAGILE. Sweat was cleaning out his system. The adrenaline rush was subsiding, fatigue taking its place.
Catching his breath…
Closing his eyes…
Just a moment…
His hand dropping to his side…
The barrel of the gun pointing to the ground…
Just a few more moments.
His eyes snapped open when he heard the voice.
“Freeze, motherfucker!”
Freeze, Decker thought.
Hit men don’t give warning.
But cops say “freeze.”
And good cops usually don’t say “freeze, motherfucker” without provocation. So this was probably a cop and not a nice one.
All this clicked inside Decker’s brain within a split second of decision-making. He dropped and rolled, while shooting in the direction of the voice, the semiautomatic spitting out muzzled fire because of the silencer-pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft. He scrambled to his feet, but remained stooped behind a crate, his lungs stinging as he panted, his gasping so loud it almost drowned out the moans. Slowly, he rose, but his shakiness forced him to lean against a wooden beam. Unsteady with pinpricks of starlight dancing in his brain, he tried to equalize his balance.
The moaning had stopped.
Decker peeked out.
Of sizable girth, the man had fallen with his head back, one thick arm across a padded chest, the other arm extended open and lying over the concrete. The torso had twisted so it was resting on the hip, the stomach spilling onto the floor. The legs were crossed over one another. The face was hard to make out, but the build certainly could have been Merrin’s.
Decker inched out from his hiding space.
Donatti was standing over the contorted body, eyes cast downward, arms crossed with a pistol in the left hand. His voice was a whisper. “See what happens when you give warning. He should have just taken you out.”
“Did you…” Decker’s heart was beating so fast it threatened to break his sternum. He was still trying to suck up air. “Did you do it or did I?”
Donatti looked up. “Take a bow.”
“Jesus!” Decker felt his head go light. “Fuck!”
“Buck up,” Donatti told him. “Surely, you’re not a virgin.”
“Unfortunately no…” He swallowed hard, staring at the face. Not Merrin, but definitely a cop. “Who’s left?”
“Just the two pups guarding Chaim’s office. I don’t know who’s actually in the office, because even I can’t see through walls.”
“Any more of these?”
“These? You mean cops?”
Decker nodded.
“Not that I know.” Donatti smiled. “I knew you’d come back.”
“Gotta keep an eye on you, Chris.”
“That’s bullshit. Your ego refused to allow me to be the one to save your brother-in-law.”
“Can we go?”
With expert precision, Donatti led Decker through the maze of crates, cases, parcels, and boxes. In minutes, they were within fifty feet of the office, light leaking out from under the door. No one was in view.
Where were the guards?
Donatti stepped back and pulled Decker into the shadows, his eyes in constant motion. They were out of sight, in back of a stack of wooden crates. “I don’t like this.”
“Where are the kids?”
“Don’t know.”
“What do you mean-”
“I don’t know. They were here a second ago.”
“They’re not here now. Where did they go? In the office?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I’m not a fucking mind reader. Shut up!”
“Fuck you!” Decker snapped back. His eyes darted from side to side. He looked through the scope of his gun, sweeping the lens across the area.
First there was nothing; then an eye blink of motion flitted out from the corner of his visual field. Reacting before the thought fully registered, he yanked Donatti down and jerked him hard to the left as bullets ripped through a stack of cardboard boxes containing television sets. It set off an explosion of glass and metal, a cloudburst of thousands of slivers and shards that flew through the air and rained down onto their heads.
Deadly silence followed the eruption.
The moments tapped by, punctuated by the rapping of the rain on the roof and the windowsills. Decker lay facedown on the floor, but Donatti was on his haunches, ready to spring. Both of them remained fixed in position, their eyes locked on one another in tacit communication. Decker saw Chris hold up a finger.