The Devil’s Daughter, page 24
“Bridge thought the biggest mistake she ever made was not getting you to knock her up,” Kevin tells me. “She said it would’ve changed her life.”
It would have changed mine too, though not in the way she thought. I always liked Bridget, but I couldn’t have saved her, not from herself.
The bell above the bar door sounds. Kevin and I turn, and I just about fall off my barstool when V walks in.
“There you are,” she says like I’m a lost kid. “She called.”
“Who?”
“Lucy Garrett, and she sounded terrified.”
She didn’t leave V a number, just a time and a place to meet. V could tell she was in trouble, but Lucy wouldn’t say what the trouble was over the phone. V scribbled down the address on a scrap of paper and, handing it to me now, says, “She wants you to meet her there at midnight and said to make sure you’re not late. She doesn’t feel safe out on the street alone.”
This smells rotten to me. Either she was putting on an act for V’s benefit or Lucy really is frightened of something—more likely of somebody.
V wants to know what I’m going to do, and when I tell her that I don’t know, I mean it. I have the evidence I need to put Garrett away and that should be enough to put the whole business to rest. And as much as I sympathize, I’m not sure Lucy can be trusted. Playing at being her white knight is plenty dangerous, but I have a nasty habit of listening to my better angels and I’m genuinely curious. There are people who would be happy to see her dead, maybe including her own father. And after what Kevin just told me about Bridget Moran, I’m not sure I could forgive myself if I did nothing and Lucy shared the same fate.
“Lucy she said she wants you to bring them with you. I don’t know what that meant, but she was pretty insistent.”
She meant Garrett’s movies.
“Listen,” I say to V, “there are a couple of things I need to do before I meet her, so why don’t you go on home and wait for me there?”
“No. I’m not going to sit in the apartment like some mousy little housewife and worry that you’re lying dead somewhere.” V sets her jaw when she says this, letting me know that she won’t brook an argument, that nothing I say is going to change her mind, but I try anyway. I tell her the meet is liable to turn murderous, that I don’t know what Lucy wants or what the lay of the land is, and that the whole thing might be a setup.
V isn’t buying any of it, so I put my foot down.
“You’re not coming with me, V, and that’s the end of it.”
“Listen, Ace”—V calls me Ace whenever she’s furious with me—“I don’t need you to look after me. I can take care of myself.”
“No, you can’t, and I’m not going to let you get killed just to prove I’m right.”
“Do you know what, Jack? Fuck you. I mean it. Fuck you!” And V gives me the finger for good measure before storming out of the bar.
When she’s gone, Kevin whistles and says, “She’s really something, isn’t she?” and I have to agree.
I walk over and take a look at the address on West Fifty-Sixth Street Lucy gave V. I recognize the building. It’s an old tenement that was packed five to a room when I was a kid. It was dilapidated even then, and after evicting their tenants, the owners hired Tommy O’Connor, a local firebug, to torch the place for the insurance money. Nobody has lived there since, and the building is still burned out and looks about to collapse. There are any number of places to hide both inside and out, and I decide I need more firepower before meeting Lucy.
I head over to Carmine’s apartment in Brooklyn to see if he can help out, but he’s not home. His wife, Estelle, tells me Carmine is where he always is on warm spring nights, fishing off the Sheepshead Bay Pier, so I hoof it over there.
“Catch anything?” I call out, and without turning around, Carmine takes a striped bass the size of a small dog out of a bucket and holds it up for me to see. “It’s yours if you want it. I got a ton of them in the freezer. Estelle’ll have my head if I bring another one home.”
“Fish gives me hives,” I say and lean up against the pier railing like I’m taking in the view.
Before I get a chance to tell Carmine why I’m here, he says, “The answer is no.”
“You don’t know the question yet.”
“Yeah, I do. You want to know whether we’ve heard from our friend in Florida, and like I said, the answer is no. Meyer takes his time about these things, so you’re just gonna have to wait.” I don’t say anything, but it doesn’t take Carmine long to figure out what I’m up to. “You’re gonna blow him off and turn Garrett over to the cops, aren’t you, Jack? In my personal opinion, this is a bad idea.”
“You’re probably right, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
“Then why don’t you just tell me what you want.”
“C’mon, Carmine, work with me here. You know how this kind of thing goes.”
“We’re talking guns.”
“We’re definitely talking guns, and something a lot heavier than the automatic I’m packing.”
Carmine thinks this over for a second or two, then says, “Yeah, okay. But do me a favor, will ya, buddy? When this is over, forget you know me.”
Carmine owns a half-dozen semidetached houses in Bay Ridge and rents all but one of them out. The one he keeps for himself is used for a host of nefarious purposes. It’s got a panoramic view of the street, so it must have been where Carmine and the boys holed up during the recent mob unpleasantness. It’s also a handy place to keep a stiff on ice until it’s safe to dump it out in the Meadowlands. And it serves as a low-rent love nest when Carmine is in the mood for a quick schtup, but I don’t think that happens much anymore. Prostate problems apparently. Carmine told me he hasn’t taken a decent piss in years.
The garage is around the back, and the inside looks like an armory. Weapons of all sorts and calibers are mounted on the walls or packed in grease in their original crates. There are M5s and M15s, .50-cal machine guns, military-grade sidearms, a box of fragmentation grenades, even a bazooka.
“What’re you looking for?” Carmine asks, like he’s running a sale and I have to think about it. If somebody comes for me, they’ll be carrying something like a Thompson, so I take a Browning automatic rifle down from one of the racks.
“You’re gonna want these too,” Carmine says, handing me a couple of thirty-round banana clips. I also grab a military-style .45 modified to full auto and jam it into my waistband.
“You sure you want to do this?” Carmine asks. “If Garrett’s sending people after you, they’re gonna be good.”
I tell him that I’m sure. I tell him that Lucy wants the movies back so she can return them to her father. Otherwise, Garrett’s going to kill her.
“Her own father?”
“I can’t let that happen, Carmine. I can’t let him hurt his kid, not again.”
“Yeah. Okay. I get it. Your funeral, Jack.” When I glare at him, he adds, “It’s a figure of speech,” and rolls down the garage door.
CHAPTER 46
I’ve been standing in the doorway of an abandoned shoe repair shop since a quarter to eleven. I’m watching the tenement where I’m supposed to meet Lucy from across the street, but no one has gone in or out of the building, not as far as I can tell anyway. It’s obvious the idea to meet here wasn’t hers, which doesn’t mean she isn’t in on whatever comes next. I’m not new to this game, so I’m going to stay right where I am until I see if she or anyone else turns up.
I don’t have to wait long. Around eleven thirty Garrett’s limo cruises down Fifty-Sixth Street, followed by the panel van that spirited me off a few weeks ago. The two cars make a left onto Tenth Avenue.
Bob Carson’s Cadillac Fleetwood appears a few minutes later and pulls to the curb in front of the tenement. He also has help. His guys spill out of a Chevy station wagon, and along with Carson and his driver, they all disappear into the building.
The odds of me surviving an encounter with these hitters are exceedingly long, so I stay put. And it doesn’t take but a minute or two before Garrett’s boys steal around the corner and creep up on the tenement. They have guns drawn—handguns, sawed-off shotguns, and just as I suspected, two of them are carrying Thompson submachine guns.
I can’t be the object of all of this. I’m pretty good at what I do, but it doesn’t require a small army to take me down. And whoever leaned on Lucy to arrange this meet can’t possibly believe that I’m stupid enough to bring Garrett’s movies with me to an abandoned tenement in the middle of the night. No, I’m just the icing on the cake. This is about Garrett and Carson having it out once and for all.
I feel like I have a ringside seat on what’s about to happen, so I’m content to stand in the shadows and wait for the action to unfold. What I don’t count on is Lucy Garrett’s sudden appearance.
Even before I see her, I can hear her high heels clacking against the sidewalk as she hustles down Fifty-Sixth Street. I didn’t think she’d actually show, despite her call to V, but here she is: nervous, walking fast, and constantly glancing behind her to see if anyone is following.
“Lucy!” I hiss as loud as I dare, but she doesn’t hear me. Instead, she makes a beeline for the tenement, and I have no choice. I unstrap the Browning, snatch the .45 I cadged from Carmine’s garage out of my waistband, and dash out into the street.
“Lucy,” I hiss louder this time.
When she spots me, she shouts, “There you are!”
I can’t have much time, so I grab her by the arm, bark, “C’mon let’s go,” and try to hustle her off the street before the shooting starts, but she doesn’t make it easy.
She rips her arm free and bellows, “I want those movies, Jack!” She pulls a .22 Ruger out of her purse and aims it at my head in case I miss her point.
Not only is Lucy armed, but her voice is echoing off the tenement, and she’s standing in a pool of light from a streetlamp.
“You’ve got to let me handle this, Lucy.”
“I mean it, Jack. I want those movies. He’s going to kill me if I don’t give them back!” She cocks the Ruger’s hammer.
“Okay, but I’ll tell you what. Come down to the Village with me and I’ll give them to you there. How does that sound?”
“No! I want them right now!”
“I don’t have them on me, Lucy. Just come downtown with me and I’ll hand them over. I promise.”
I still half-expect her to take a shot at me, but instead she sits in a cross-legged heap on the pavement and buries her face in her hands. She’s a pretty good little actress, but those tears are real, so I squat down next to her and lay a hand on her knee.
“I know I’ve been really bad,” she confesses, “but it’s not my fault. And now everything’s ruined. What am I going to do? What’s going to happen to me?” Lucy’s shoulders begin to shake, and when I put my arm around her, her tears come on.
“I’m going to make your father burn for what he did to you,” I tell her, and I mean it. “I’m going to make sure they lock him up and throw away the key, but what we need to do right now is get out of here. You were right when you told V you weren’t safe. Neither of us are. So for now forget about the movies. Forget about your old man and the terrible things he did. Forget about all of it and just come with me.”
Lucy wipes at her tears with the heel of her hand and she’s letting me help her to her feet when I hear V call out, “Lucy? Lucy, is that you?” and my heart sinks.
She comes striding down the street big as life, ignoring the warning I gave her in O’Doul’s and oblivious to the danger.
“V, get off the street!” I shout, but she walks right past me and takes Lucy in her arms.
The kid sags against her. They’re both victims, both scarred by their fathers’ abuse and still suffering from it, but as horrible as that is, this is no time to commiserate. This is the time to run, and as if to prove my point, gunfire crackles from the tenement.
I heave V to the pavement, throw myself on top of her, and return fire. Tracers from the Browning light up the tenement’s entryway, and whoever’s shooting at us ducks for cover.
“Are you okay?”
Ever the smart-ass, V says, “I will be as soon as you get off me,” and I’m about to ask Lucy the same thing, but she’s far from okay.
She’s taken three in the chest, there’s blood everywhere, and now V is crouching over her with a ghastly look on her face, desperately trying to stanch the bleeding with her bare hands.
It’s pointless. Lucy’s gone.
I lose it. My brain begins to sizzle and bile rises in my throat. I wheel and open fire again, emptying a thirty-round banana clip. I see two guys go down and what I really want to do is reload, charge over there, and make sure they’re both dead, but I don’t. I catch my breath, and my head clears enough to realize that V and I are still easy targets.
“C’mon, we’ve got to go,” I shout at V.
But V’s frozen, too undone to move. I have to do something or we’re both dead, so I snatch her off her feet and carry her off the street just as gunfire erupts again.
But this barrage isn’t coming in our direction. Muzzle flashes light up the tenement windows. Garrett’s and Carson’s guys are going at it, which gives me enough time to dart down the alley between the tenement and the building next to it.
I sprint out onto a garbage-strewn vacant lot and put V down as gently as I can. We’re crouched behind the rusting hulk of an abandoned car. V is trembling and her blood-soaked hands are shaking.
“She’s dead, Jack,” she says as if she can’t believe it, and when I don’t answer, she throws her arms around me.
Every cell in my body is screaming at me to do whatever I have to do to make V safe, but I can’t—not now. “V. I need you to listen to me. Do you think you can do that?” When V manages to nod, I say, “Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to sit tight here until the shooting stops. When it does, you’ll make your way up to Ninth Avenue. There’s a phone booth on the corner of Fifty-Fifth and Ninth. If you haven’t heard sirens by then, call the cops. Do you think you can do that?”
She doesn’t answer.
“V!”
“Yes, okay. But what are you going to do?”
“I’m going in after them.”
“You can’t, Jack! They’ll kill you!”
“I don’t have a choice, V,” I say as calmly as I can. “If I don’t end this here and now, whoever survives will come for us next and they’ll keep coming until they run us down. I can’t put you through that, so stay here until the shooting stops, then make that call.” I tell V I love her, kiss her, then dash into the tenement through a back door.
I check the Browning’s ammo. I’ve got about fifteen rounds left in my clip, but I’m holding the other two Carmine gave me. They should be enough to give me a fighting chance.
The tenement is a rabbit warren, full of dark corners to hide in and lie in wait. All of the apartments are abandoned, their doors off their hinges, their interiors dark and shadowy. The hallways are strewn with garbage and stink of urine and feces. I’m feeling my way along when a burst of gunfire coming from the floor above me sends me into a crouch. It’s so dark that I can’t see a thing—which is an advantage. If I can’t see them, they can’t see me. That’s what I’m hoping anyway. And I’m moving again, trying to be as quiet as I can, but I manage only a few steps before stumbling over something.
It’s a body. I can’t make out who it is, but I smell the blood. I feel for a carotid pulse, but there isn’t one. The guy has taken a round clean through the throat, and my hand comes away thick with his blood.
I hear two guys whispering. Beams from their flashlights dance across the hallway walls. They’re bound to spot me, so I drop into a prone firing position before they do and let loose a burst from the Browning. They take the fire full-on and are catapulted backward. More voices now. Shouts. Footsteps coming my way. I duck into one of the empty apartments just as two more guys come hurtling down the hall. I let them get past me, then come up from behind, shout, and when they turn, fire.
I’ve been lucky so far. I’ve held the element of surprise, but now that’s gone. I’ve got to keep moving, trying to outflank whoever comes for me next. I grab a flashlight out of the hand of one of the guys I’ve just shot and search for a stairwell, a way to get to the high ground, a way to the roof.
There’s carnage in the stairwell. Three bodies are sprawled there, and four more are lying in the hallway of the floor above. I shine the flashlight on their faces, looking to see if they are Garrett or Carson or both, but they’re not here.
I make my way to the top of the stairs and try to push open the door to the roof, but something’s blocking it. It takes effort, but I manage to shove it open and find still another body. It’s Carson’s driver, shot through the heart, his automatic still in his outstretched hand.
“I’m over here,” Carson calls out.
This is probably a trap, so I’m cautious. I ease my way out onto the roof, around a corner, and find Carson propped up against the iron base of a rooftop water tank. He’s been hit and it’s bad.
“We just don’t know when to leave well enough alone, do we, Jack?”
“Occupational hazard in my line, Bob. You’re bleeding, you know? You should probably see somebody about that.”
“A little too late, don’t you think?”
“I guess so.”
“Is the kid okay?”
“You mean Lucy? Lucy’s dead.” My delivery is pretty brutal, and Carson takes the news like he’s been slapped.
“Then I’ve got something of hers for you. It’s in the back seat of the Caddy. If you make it out of here alive, look after it for me, will you?”
“Where’s Garrett, Bob?”
“I’m right here, Jack.” Garrett appears from behind me. He’s heard every word, and before I can even turn around, he shoots Carson, killing him.
