I wrote my number down on a bar nap, stood and kissed her cheek. I spilled some of my Black and Tan on her shoes. I don’t think she noticed.
“Two weeks,” she reminded me.
“Better call or I’ll come looking for you.”
“I’d hate that,” she purred.
Smiling with substance for the first time in weeks, I continued making the rounds. As I moved through the crowd, I received an odd mixture of congratulation and condolence. MacClough was in his element, pouring beers and weaving tales to anyone who would listen. They all listened. I knew his stories by heart as if they’d been passed onto me for safekeeping, but I could listen to them still. He had the gift of making them fresh with each recounting. As I finished my pint, I lip-synced the words along with John as he captivated Guppy and my brother Josh with one of his favorites: the one about walking off his traffic post in Coney Island on the Fourth of July so he could bang a Puerto Rican nurse in the back of an ambulance. MacClough caught me watching, gave me a nod, and kept going without missing a beat.
Before John got to the part where his captain catches him with the nurse, Larry Feld grabbed me by the elbow and ushered me to a more private part of the room. Larry understood very little about people beyond greed and desperation. He had always been too hungry and ambitious himself to notice much else. But Larry understood pain. It was the engine of his life, though I doubt he ever thought of it as such. And for the first time since his mother’s funeral, I saw real sorrow in his eyes. He held my hand as he held it that day. This time, however, it was his hand pulling me up from the depths. When he noticed the first hints of appreciation in my expression, he let go of my hand and disappeared.
The bulk of the crowd had turned into pumpkins and rats well before the witching hour. There were only a few of us left. MacClough, of course. Fazio and Hurley, like any two self-respecting cops, were in it until last call. Jeffrey, looking for his heart in a bottle of single malt scotch, was lingering in a corner somewhere. Bob Street from the Star Spangled Deli and old man Carney, the proprietor of Carney’s Cabs, were playing a game of Buzz at the end of the bar with shots of Remy Martin and Grand Marnier. Card-carrying Bud drinkers, Street and Carney had expensive tastes when someone else was picking up the tab.
Curious, I wandered over to Jeffrey’s lonely corner. “Did you pay for this?” I asked.
Staring oddly at the bottle, he seemed not to understand the question. Then, realizing I wasn’t asking about the scotch, but the party, he had a good laugh at himself. It was a rare sight, seeing my big brother laugh at himself.
“I paid for part of it,” he said. “Does it matter?”
“I guess not, not really.” I sat down across from him. “I think there are some things we need to get out in the open.”
“Cut to the chase, little brother.”
“Was it your idea to cover-up what happened between MacClough and Hernandez?”
“It’s not like you to be euphemistic, Dylan. What’s this ‘what happened between’ crap?” Jeff pointed to the bar. “Your buddy over there blew a suspect’s brains out and I turned him into a hero detective. So sue me.”
“MacClough says it was suicide,” I defended.
“Sure it was, little brother. Christ, I don’t know. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he’s convinced himself that’s what really happened. It’s a rather moot point, don’t you think?”
“So John made detective on the strength of a corpse and Fazio’s career.”
“Careers have turned on much less. MacClough was in the right place at the right time. It was his street contacts that led him to Hernandez, not mine. He was a damned beat cop, for chrissakes, a uniform. If he had just let it alone, worked his shifts and gone home, history would have been very different for all of us. But once he stuck his nose into things, he became the beneficiary of circumstance.”
“Or,” I differed, “its victim.”
“Or its victim.”
“But why the cover-up? Why not-”
“Because,” Jeffrey cut me off, “police corruption was rampant then. The department was in disarray, still reeling from the Knapp Commission. There had even been some rumblings of state or federal intervention. The last thing the NYPD needed at that moment was the fallout from a rogue cop torturing and killing a suspect. Remember, cops were still called pigs back then. Hernandez would’ve been seen as a convenient minority fall guy, another victim of the big bad police. So I seized the moment. Me, the ambitious little pis-sant A.D.A., turned a sow’s ear into a career for myself and a gold shield for your friend. With a bit of cooperation from the police brass-they were so fucking desperate to preserve their precious department, they would have done almost anything-MacClough’s promise to keep his mouth shut and a few favors from the press, I spun a potential disaster into shining glory.” Looking almost wistful, he said: “It’s too bad, really, you couldn’t have seen the headlines.”
“Oh, but I did.”
He didn’t seem to hear what I said and, as he continued to speak, Jeffrey gestured with his hands, framing imaginary headlines that floated somewhere above our table:
“HERO COP BEATS FEDS TO THE PUNCH”
I snapped my fingers in front of his face to break the trance.
“God, Dylan,” he went on, “those were heady days. It was perfect. All the rumblings from Albany and Washington came to an abrupt halt. So if you are asking me whether the life of one scumbag kidnapper and the career of one honest cop was worth it, I’d say it was. If Fazio knew all the details, he’d agree.”
“Okay, Jeff, I just wanted to hear it from your own lips.”
Standing now, he said: “I haven’t properly thanked you for getting Zak back to us.”
“Forget it. His being safe should be enough thanks for both of us.”
“When did you get so smart?” he teased.
“Obviously, when you weren’t looking.”
“Save my seat. I want you to tell me about Kira.” He brushed his hand gently across my cheek. “I may never have met her, but I know she was too good for you.”
Jeffrey could not have known how much the world would change before he got back to his seat.
Bob Street and old man Carney had had enough. They held each other, zig zagging their way to the Scupper’s door. Once at the threshold, however, they were at a bit of a loss. I set them free, pushing open the door. The two of them stumbled onto the pavement, laughing. I watched them stagger on down the otherwise silent street until they disappeared fully into the night. The cool salty air felt good on my face and made a home for itself in my lungs, but I could feel exhaustion tapping at my shoulder. I looked forward to a lengthy visit with my bed. In some sense I was relieved that Kira and I had never shared that bed. If we had, I could never have slept there again.
As I began to pull the door shut, I could still hear Bob Street and Carney laughing like giddy poltergeists moving onto their next haunt. I never did get the door closed. Another hand, a powerful hand held it open. I could say little about the man on the opposite side of the door other than he had a steel grip and was bathed in darkness. Beyond that, he was a mystery.
“Sorry,” I said, “private party.”
“I’m looking for MacClough, man,” was his answer to that. “I think he’s expecting me.”
The muscles in my arm ached from holding the door against his grip. I called to MacClough, still futzing around behind the bar, and told him there had been a request for an audience.
“If I’m expectin’ the man, let him in.”
And in that instant I let go of the door, I knew something was wrong. The night visitor yanked the door open and came charging into the bar out of his darkness. He was a short, well-muscled latino dressed in fatigue pants and a white tank top. His exposed skin was a maze of grotesque tattoos, the tank top preventing me from making sense of the stains on his body. He sported a pinstripe-thin moustache above a wicked gray goatee. His scalp was shaved and his eyes were black and feral. They saw nothing but their prey, Johnny MacClough.