Текст книги "Gideon’s Sword"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

58

Wherever there were drug dealers there were guns. And the center of drug dealing in New York City, at least at the street level, could be found in the ironically named Mount Eden neighborhood of the South Central Bronx. Gideon sat on the D train rocketing northward from Manhattan, a wad of cash burning a hole in his pocket. This was not the most intelligent way to acquire a firearm, but he was in a hurry and it had the advantage of efficiency.

As the D train pulled out of the 161st Street Yankee Stadium stop, a man who had just gotten on angled over to sit down beside him. It took Gideon a few moments to realize it was Garza, tricked out as an artist in black beret and peacoat.

“What, exactly, are you doing?” Garza asked. His tone had lost much of its initial affability.

“My job.”

“You’re out of control. You’ve got to cool it, slow down, and come in to discuss the next step with us.”

“This has nothing to do with you anymore,” said Gideon, not even bothering to keep his voice down. “It’s my gig now. It’s personal.”

“That’s just what I mean: you’re getting too close to this. I’ve never seen anything so unprofessional. Eli was wrong to trust you. You’re in danger of compromising the mission with your recklessness.”

Gideon didn’t answer.

“Going up to Throckmorton Academy, pretending to be a parent – what kind of a crazy damn move is that? From now on, we want to know what you’re doing and where you’re going. If you think you can beat Nodding Crane, you’re a fool.”

Gideon sensed Garza knew nothing of Hart Island. It gave him a certain satisfaction to be ahead of Glinn and his smooth-​operating sidekick for once. “I’ll handle it myself.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll need backup. Don’t be a damn idiot.”

Gideon scoffed.

“Where are you meeting him?”

“None of your business.”

“You go rogue on us, Crew, and we’ll shut you down, I swear to God we will.”

Gideon hesitated. This was a complication he didn’t need. “Corona Park. Queens.”

A beat. “Corona Park?”

“You know. Where the old World’s Fair was. We’re meeting at the Unisphere.”

A silence. “When?”

“Midnight tonight.”

“Why there?”

“Just a place to meet.”

Garza shook his head. “A place to meet.”

“Nodding Crane murdered my friend. Now it’s either him or me. Like I said, this has nothing to do with you. When I get done with this business, I’ll take care of yours. Don’t try to stop me.”

Garza was silent for a while, then he nodded. As the train pulled into the next stop, he rose and left, a disgusted look on his face.

Crew got off at 170th and the Grand Concourse. He walked eastward toward the park, passing a row of abandoned buildings. Reaching the park – a sad affair with dirt instead of grass and trash everywhere – he slowed his walk to a loiter, glancing around, just another suburban guy looking for drugs. Almost immediately he was accosted by a dealer, who passed him murmuring smoke, smoke.

He stopped, turned. “Yeah.”

The dealer swerved and came back. He was a short, stooped kid with a comb stuck in his hair, pants hanging south of his ass. “What you need?” he asked. “Got smoke, blow, horse…”

“A pistol.”

Silence.

“I’ll pay big money,” Gideon went on. “But I need something heavy-caliber, best quality.”

The dealer didn’t seem to hear at first. Then he muttered something that sounded like “wait here” and rambled off.

Gideon waited. Twenty minutes later the kid was back. “Follow me,” he said.

Gideon followed him out of the park and into an abandoned building on Morris Avenue, an old brownstone with bashed-out windows and a dark, urine-fragrant interior. As dangerous as this was, it was better than asking Garza for another gun on bended knee. He didn’t want to be any more beholden to the man than necessary. He knew he should be nervous, even scared, and yet he felt nothing. Nothing but rage.

The dealer went to the dismal stairwell, whistled up it. A whistle returned.

“Second floor,” he said.

Gideon mounted the stairs, stepping over a scattering of used condoms, crack vials, and vomit. He reached the second floor. On the landing, two men waited, both dressed in expensive gym clothes with puffy white sneakers. They were Hispanic and well groomed. The taller one, obviously the leader, had a carefully clipped five-day stubble, plenty of rings and gold chains, and smelled strongly of Armani Attitude. The shorter one sported several cold sores.

“Let’s see the money,” said the tall one, flashing a self-assured grin.

“When I see the gun.”

The leader shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned back, looking down at Gideon. He was tall and used his height to intimidate. His eyes, however, were stupid. “We got the gun.”

“Let’s see it. I don’t have all day.”

The short one with the cold sores reached into his jacket, pulled a gun halfway out. “Nine-millimeter Beretta.”

“What’s the price?”

“How much you got?”

Gideon felt his rage, already close to the boiling point, rise. “Listen, sucker. Name your price. Then I’m going to check out the piece. If it’s good, I pay. If not, I walk.”

Tall Man nodded, puckering his lips. “Show it to him.”

Cold Sores removed the gun, handed it to Gideon. Gideon took it, looked it over, snapped the rack a few times. “The magazine?”

Out came the magazine. Gideon took it, frowned. “Rounds?”

“Look, man, we can’t have no shooting here.”

Gideon thought about that. They were right, of course. He would have to field-test it later. He took the magazine, slapped it in, hefted the gun, pulled the trigger. It appeared to be in excellent condition. “I’ll take it.”

“Two thousand.”

That was a lot for a seven-hundred-dollar pistol. He looked at it closely. The serial number had been filed off, which probably meant nothing. Acid would bring it up again. He felt in his jacket pocket, where he had put his cash, done up in rubber-banded blocks of five hundred. He selected four, brought them out. He put the gun in his pocket and gave the packets to Tall Man.

He turned to go and heard a voice. “Just a minute.”

He turned back to find both men with pistols aimed at him. “Give me the rest of your money,” Tall Man said.

Gideon stared. “You robbing me? A customer?”

“You got it, boy.”

Gideon had another two thousand in his pocket. He made a quick decision, pulled out the money, tossed it on the ground. “That’s all of it.”

“Pistol, too.”

“Now, that’s going too far.”

“Then kiss your white ass good-bye.” They both grinned, aiming their guns.

“My whiteass?” Gideon asked, incredulously. He reached in, removed the pistol, aimed it at the men.

“You’re forgetting it ain’t loaded, you punk-ass bitch.”

“If I give you the gun back, promise to let me go,” Gideon whined, holding it out.

“Sure thing.” Two shit-eating smiles followed this assurance.

Gideon’s hand shook so much they began to laugh. Tall Man reached over to get the pistol and, just at that moment of distraction, Gideon lashed out at Cold Sores, smacking the gun out of his hand while at the same time jamming his foot against the side of his knee and twisting himself out of the way of Tall Man’s line of fire. As Cold Sores went down with a howl, Tall Man fired, and Gideon felt the bullet tug the shoulder of his jacket. With a furious scream he fell on Tall Man. He went down like a rotten tree and Gideon landed on top of him, wresting the gun from him in one violent motion and jamming it in his eye, pressing it hard against the eyeball.

“No, no, oww!” the man screamed in pain, trying to twist his head, but the barrel was pressed so hard against his eye, he was forced to stop moving. “Stop, please, oh shit, don’t! My eye!”

Cold Sores was up again, having retrieved his gun. He aimed it at Gideon.

“Drop it or I fire!” Gideon screamed like a lunatic. “And then I’ll kill you!”

“Drop it!” shrieked Tall Man. “Do what he says!”

Cold Sores backed out of the room, limping, not dropping it. Gideon could see he was going to run. Hell, let him go. Cold Sores broke and ran. Gideon could hear his footsteps clattering down the stairs, and then a crash as he fell in panic. More lopsided running and then silence.

“Looks like it’s just us,” said Gideon. He could feel warm blood running down his arm. The bullet had evidently grazed his shoulder. A tuft of material stood out. The actual wound was dead, without feeling.

Tall Man blubbered incoherently. Keeping the barrel pressed hard into his eye socket, rendering him immobile, Gideon felt inside the man’s jacket, removed the money. There was another, much bigger brick of cash in there – at least five thousand. He took that as well, along with a knife. Then, as an afterthought, he ripped the gold jewelry from the man’s neck, yanked off his diamond rings, and took his wallet. Feeling around in the pockets, he collected car keys, house keys, loose change, and half a dozen nine-millimeter rounds that had evidently been removed from the Beretta’s magazine.

He pulled the pistol out of the man’s eye. Tall Man lay on the floor, blubbering like a baby. “Listen to me, Fernando,” said Gideon, looking at the man’s driver’s license. “I’ve got your keys. I know your address. You try any shit and I’m coming to your house and I’m going to kill your family, your dog, your cat, and your goldfish.”

The man let out a wail, covering his face with his hands, rocking on the floor.

As Gideon left the building, he made sure Cold Sores wasn’t lurking around, then began heading for the Grand Concourse subway station. Along the way he dropped the keys, bling, and wallet down a storm drain, keeping the money and guns.

Now he had two pistols. He ducked into a doorway and examined his haul. The second was a Taurus Millennium Pro in.32 ACP caliber with a full magazine. He loaded the 9mm rounds into the magazine of the Beretta, slapped it into place, and tucked both firearms into the rear of his belt. Then he took off his jacket and examined his shoulder. It wasn’t quite as superficial as he’d thought, but it was still only a flesh wound. He put his jacket back on and glanced at his watch. Ten AM.

On the way to the subway, he stopped at a drugstore, where he purchased a butterfly bandage and applied it to his shoulder in the restroom. Next, on impulse, he dropped into a variety store, where he bought a notebook, some paper, pens, and a thick manila envelope. Finally, he repaired to a nearby coffee shop to write his last will and testament.

59

The coffee shop was a cheerful place, a sturdy holdout against the grime and hopelessness outside. A battleax waitress, at least sixty but spry as a teenager, with bobbing hair and pancake makeup, came bustling over.

“What can I get you, hon?”

She was perfect. For the first time in a long while, Gideon felt an emotion that wasn’t dark. He tried to smile. “Coffee, eggs over easy, bacon, white toast.”

“You got it.”

She went off and he opened the notebook, thinking. There were two things he loved in the world: his fishing cabin in the Jemez Mountains and his Winslow Homer drawing. The drawing would have to go back to the Merton Art Museum in Kittery, Maine, from which he’d appropriated it years before. But the cabin…He wanted to make sure it went to someone who would love it as he did, who would not let it go to wrack and ruin. Or sell it to a developer. Even if he defeated Nodding Crane – and that was a big if – he knew now that he would still be staring death in the face.

The waitress slid his breakfast in front of him. “Writing the great American novel?” she asked.

He gave her his best smile and she went off, pleased. As Gideon contemplated his own mortality – which he’d been doing a lot of lately – he realized he had nobody. He’d spent most of his adult life pushing people away. He had no family, no true friends, and no colleagues he was friendly with from work. The closest thing he had to a pal was Tom O’Brien – but their relationship had always been transactional, and the guy lacked integrity. His only real friend had been a prostitute – and he’d gotten her killed.

“Top off that coffee?” the waitress asked.

“Thanks.”

And then a name came to him. Someone he could trust. Charlie Dajkovic. He hadn’t been in touch with the man since the death of General Tucker. The fellow had spent some time in the hospital, but last Gideon had heard he was recovering nicely. They weren’t friends – not exactly. But he was an honest man, a good man.

Gideon began to write, trying to control the faint shake in his hand. It was not easy. Dajkovic would get the cabin and everything in it, with the exception of the Winslow Homer. He appointed Dajkovic his executor and charged him with returning the drawing (anonymously) to the Merton Art Museum. In life he had escaped all suspicion; he sure as hell didn’t want to be fingered after death.

It didn’t take long to complete the document. As he read it over, his mind drifted to his secret fishing hole on Chihuahueños Creek. It had taken him years of lashing the waters of the creeks that drained the northern Jemez Mountains to find that one place – the most beautiful on earth. After a moment’s consideration, he turned over the letter and drew a map for Dajkovic, showing him how to get there, along with suggestions for what sort of flies to use at what times of the year. That would be his biggest bequest.

He hoped to hell Dajkovic liked to fish.

When he was done, he called the waitress over.

“More coffee?” she asked.

“A favor.”

She immediately brightened.

“This letter,” said Gideon, “is my last will and testament. I need two witnesses.”

“Aw, hon, you can’t be over thirty, what you thinking about that for?” The waitress filled up his mug anyway. “I got thirty years on you and I still ain’t thinking about that.”

“I’ve got a terminal illness.” As soon as he said it, he wondered why in the world he was confiding in this stranger.

The waitress laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. Nothing’s engraved in stone. Pray to the Lord and he’ll deliver you a miracle.” She turned. “Gloria? Get over here, this gentleman needs our help.”

The shop’s other waitress came over, a chubby girl of perhaps twenty, her face shining with happiness at being of service. Gideon felt moved by these two random strangers with big hearts.

“I’m going to sign this,” Gideon said, “and then I’d like the two of you to witness it and sign your names here, then print them below.”

He signed, they signed, and then, as Gideon rose, the old waitress gave him a spontaneous hug. “Pray to the Lord,” she said. “There’s nothing He can’t do.”

“Thank you so much. You’ve both been really kind.”

They moved away. Gideon wrote a cover note to Eli Glinn, asking him to make sure Dajkovic received the letter; he then sealed it and addressed it to Glinn at Effective Engineering Solutions on Little West 12th Street. He removed the brick of cash he had stolen from the drug dealer, slipped it under his overturned plate, and quickly left the coffee shop.

On his way to the subway he dropped the letter into a mailbox, feeling a huge wave of self-pity at his lonely, screwed-up existence, which was soon to end one way or another. Maybe the waitress was right: he should try prayer. Nothing else had worked in his sorry life.

60

Gideon took the subway to the end of the line and caught the bus for City Island. By noon he found himself standing outside Murphy’s Bait and Tackle on City Island Avenue, seabirds wheeling overhead. It was hard to believe this sleepy fishing village was part of New York City.

He pushed in to find himself in a narrow shop with glass cases on three sides and a gigantic man in a T-shirt at the far end.

“What can I do for you?” the man boomed out in a genial Bronx accent.

“Are you Murphy?”

“The one and only.”

“I want to rent a boat.”

The rental was quickly arranged, and the man escorted him through the shop to the docks behind. There a dozen open f​i​berglass skiffs were tied up, each with a six-horsepower outboard, anchor, and gas can.

“Got a storm coming in,” Murphy said as he readied the boat for departure. “Better be back by four.”

“No problem,” Gideon replied as he stowed the fishing rod and bait box he’d purchased as a cover.

A few minutes later he set off, soon passing under the City Island Bridge and entering the open water of Long Island Sound. Hart Island lay about half a mile to the northeast, a long, low mass, indistinct in the haze, dominated by a large smokestack that rose easily a hundred fifty feet into the air. The wind had picked up and the small boat ploughed through the chop, water slapping against the hull. Dark clouds scudded across the sky and gulls rode the air currents, crying loudly.

Gideon consulted the marine chart he had purchased earlier and identified the various landmarks by sight: the Execution Rocks, the Blauzes, Davids Island, High Island, Rat Island. He tried to get a feel for the waypoints of the journey: the next time he came this way it would be dark.

The boat, with its puny engine, moved through the water at a walking pace. Gradually, the island solidified out of the haze.

Almost a mile long, it was covered with a scattering of trees interspersed among clusters of ruined brick buildings. When he was about a hundred yards offshore, he turned the tiller and began making a circuit of the island, examining it with binoculars. The large smokestack rose from a ruined complex on the eastern shore that appeared to have once been a power plant. Reefs and outcroppings were everywhere. Giant, billboard-like signs placed every few hundred yards along the shore warned visitors away:

New York City Correction Department

RESTRICTED AREA

NO Trespassing NO Docking NO Anchoring

VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

As he reached the northern end of the island, he saw some activity and threw the engine into idle, scrutinizing the scene with his binoculars. Through a screen of oak trees, he could make out a group of convicts in orange jumpsuits laboring in the middle of a field. A backhoe idled nearby. They were unloading pine coffins from the rear of a truck and laying them out beside a freshly dug trench. A group of well-armed corrections officers stood around, watching the activity, gesturing and shouting directions.

Allowing the boat to drift, Gideon continued his observations, occasionally making notes.

Satisfied at last, he fired up the engine again and continued down the western shore of the island. About midway, a long sandy beach came into view, covered with various jetsam, including trash, driftwood, and old boat hulls. The beach ended at a concrete seawall, behind which rose the old power plant complex and the great smokestack. Painted on the brick façade of the main building was a message at least a hundred feet long and thirty feet high:

PRISON

KEEP OFF

He decided to land his boat beside the seawall, next to a salt marsh and beyond a treacherous-​looking series of reefs.

Gideon brought the boat in, angling it through the reefs, moving slowly. A moment later he cut the engine, hopped out of the boat into the chop, and, wading, pulled it up on the beach.

He checked his watch: one o’clock.

61

Gideon walked up the beach, climbed over the low seawall, slipped into the cover of some trees, then paused to take stock. To his left lay an open field, beyond which stood the ruined power plant. On the right, set back from the shore, stood a neighborhood of modest bungalow houses, complete with streets, streetlights, driveways, and sidewalks. It looked like an ordinary, old-fashioned suburban neighborhood – except that everything lay in ruins, the houses crumbling, window frames broken and black, roofs caved, vines smothering the streetlights and choking the houses, the street itself a web of cracks through which sprouted weeds and stunted trees.

He waited, senses on high alert. In the distance, toward the end of the island, he could hear the faint rumble of the backhoe digging a mass grave. But this middle section of the island seemed deserted. He took from his pocket a Google Earth image he’d printed and spent a few minutes reconnoitering. Then he began moving cautiously along an overgrown street and across the broad field toward the ruined complex of buildings he’d noticed earlier. A carved limestone block set into the brick façade of the first building announced its purpose and the date: DYNAMO ROOM 1912. Through the shattered windows, he could see massive pieces of equipment: iron flywheels, rotting belts, broken gauges, steam pipes, and a giant, riveted iron furnace and boiler wrapped in vines that grew up and out of a roof open to the sky.

Gideon walked northward toward the burial grounds, keeping hidden in the brush and trees along the side of the road, moving slowly, checking the Google Earth image and taking notes, committing everything to memory. It was a postapocalyptic landscape, an entire community left to rot. Nothing had been boarded up or secured; it was as if, perhaps half a century ago, everyone had just walked away and never returned. There were parked cars sunken in weeds, a general store with moldering goods still on the shelves, houses with sagging door frames, inside of which he glimpsed decaying furniture, peeling wallpaper, an umbrella sitting in a stand by the door, an old hat on a table. He passed a ruined chapel, gaping and open to the elements; a butcher shop with rusting knives still hanging on a pegboard – and lying in the central square, an ancient, headless Barbie doll. At the edge of town he came to an old baseball field, bleachers draped in vines and the field a small forest.

Gideon skirted the ruins of a tubercularium and rows of dormitories for a juvenile workhouse, with the motto GOD AND WORK carved into the decaying lintels. There were several pits in the ground, old basements and foundations, some exposed, others covered with rotting flooring. Everything was on the verge of collapse. Consulting the Google Earth image again, he located, beyond the dormitories, a huge, circular open area covered with concrete with several decaying metal trapdoors – the subterranean remains of the old Nike missile base.

As he neared the northern end, buildings gave way to large overgrown fields, dotted with cement markers, numbered and whitewashed. The sounds of the backhoe grew louder. He crept into some dense woods bordering the fields and continued moving north. Within a quarter mile, the woods petered out into yet another overgrown field, and here Gideon dropped and crept forward on his belly, peering through binoculars at the scene of activity, about a hundred yards away, in a freshly dug area of the field.

Rows of coffins had been lined up on the edge of a long trench, and the convicts were busily handing them down to others within the trench, who were stacking them in rows, six deep and four across. He watched as they laid down two courses of coffins, forty-eight in all. Each coffin had a number scrawled on the side and lid in a black felt-tip marker.

A trusty with a clipboard kept track of the work, backed up by several guards armed with pistols and shotguns. When the coffins had all been lowered, the men climbed out, laid pieces of corrugated tin over the top layers, and stood by as the backhoe fired up, ejected a dirty cloud of diesel smoke into the air, and pushed a wall of earth onto the tin, covering up the fresh coffins with dirt to ground level. The wind was blowing hard, tossing the treetops, and Gideon could smell, from time to time, the scent of fresh earth, mingled with an acrid odor of formalin and decay. At the far end of a field stood an open-sided brick shed, in which sat a second backhoe.

Gideon circled the field, seeking a better vantage point, trying to locate where the small boxes containing limbs might be buried. He found what he was looking for in a second, parallel trench, farther down the field. It had been partially covered with dirt, keeping the most recent boxes exposed and ready for more stacking; his binoculars revealed that these boxes were small – the right size for body parts – and also marked by scrawled numbers. A piece of corrugated tin had been laid over the exposed rows of mini coffins, weighed down with dirt at one end, evidently protecting them from the elements until the stacks could be finished.

He would need a better inspection. The trench was deep, and from his vantage point he couldn’t see to its bottom. He’d have to get close enough to peer in – very close. And there was no way to do that without being caught.

He stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and casually strolled into the open field.