3 Quarters (45 page)

The knife Zeke killed Kuzak with lay at least eight feet away, far from Zeke's reach.

“This clown's prints are on the knife,” Bobby told Herbie. “He gets charged for killing his own pal and dimes on everyone else.”

“You're right,” Herbie said. “Ma would have liked this way better.”

“What the hell are you doing here anyway?” Bobby asked.

“I'm still hiding from the racket guys,” he said. “When I heard you go up, I shouted, but you didn't answer. Then I hear one of them shout your name. So I took an elevator up to head you off and came down the stairs. One of these bums obviously had the same idea and took a different elevator. I thought they were the . . . Italians.”

“No,” Bobby said. “Just a pair of dirty cops.”

“Even better,” Herbie said.

Bobby handed Herbie a few hundred dollars. “Herbie, there's a Day's Inn on West Fifty-seventh Street. Go check in. Stay put.”

B
obby hurried down the stairs, and at 8:33 PM he found Izzy Gleason waiting in the basement office.

“You're late,” Gleason said, sitting in the swivel chair behind the desk, blowing smoke at the buzzing light on the ceiling.

“How'd you get into the building?” Bobby asked.

“Through the underground garage,” Gleason said. “Why?”

Bobby gave Izzy a quick fill on everything that had happened. He told him about the blind doctor at John Shine's house, confronting Abrams, Sandy's murder, then Abrams's suicide. He told Gleason everything Roth had told him about John Shine's past. Kuzak and Zeke upstairs.

“If Dorothea is in that house,” Gleason said, “there's no more time to fuck around. Shine has to be ready to fly the coop. Either with her or without her.”

Bobby said, “If I have to, I'll go into that house with a fucking jackhammer to find her . . . .”

“You can't go in there alone,” Gleason warned. “Somehow you need to get Shine to invite you back in there . . .”

Bobby's cell phone rang. It was Patrick. “I checked last week's police physicians convention at the Hotel St. Claire. Same night the hooker named Karen Anders got wasted. Just like you thought, Bobby. The only one from the NYPD Medical Board on the list was Dr. Hector Perez.”

“He has to be the second doctor in the bag,” Bobby said.

Patrick gave Bobby Dr. Perez's home address and phone number that he'd gotten from NYPD personnel files. Bobby thanked Patrick and told him to make himself available because he might need him later. He hung up and told Gleason what he'd learned.

“I have a hunch this Dr. Perez can get us in,” Bobby said.

In the Jeep on the way to Brooklyn, Gleason lit a cigarette, and Bobby's cell phone rang again. It was Maggie. “Dad, I heard on the news about Sandy . . . . I can't stop thinking about her baby . . . .”

“Someone will pay for it, Maggie,” Bobby said as he sped over the Brooklyn Bridge, the lights of the harbor twinkling, ferries moving across the dark waters, Lady Liberty's torch burning a hole in the New York night. “The police know I had nothing to do with it. Don't you worry.”

“I just worry about that little boy,” Maggie said. “I kept thinking about what we talked about. That he looked so familiar, just like someone we know . . .”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Like a face you know you've seen on
America's Most Wanted . . .”

“Well, I think I know who Sandy's baby looks like,” Maggie said.

“Who?” Bobby said.

“That guy that's running for governor,” Maggie said. “Little Donald looks just like that guy Gerald Stone . . . .”

A
t 9:52
PM
, after she had bathed and he'd blow-dried her hair, Shine was ready to give Dorothea another Haldol pill, just as he'd been doing three times a day for the past eighteen months. Tonight he would give her a fourth, Shine thought, to make her sleep on the trip to Miami. He would refuel and then fly two hundred miles southeast to the tiny Bahamian Island called Norman's Cay, forty miles southeast of bustling Nassau. In the 1980s Norman's Cay was one of the main money-laundering and smuggling ports of the cocaine cartels. Most of those people were either dead or doing life, but there were still enough marginal players left there who knew their way around a crooked dollar to attract John Shine.

The bags were already packed. Nothing much for him. Just some of the rare Emerson editions, some shirts, underwear, and trousers. Equally light for Dorothea. He'd buy new wardrobes in the islands to go with their new identities on the new passports. A whole new identity—Social Security Card, passport, INS green card, driver's license—could be purchased on the streets of neighborhoods like Sunset Park for five thousand dollars apiece. The craftsmanship was excellent, he thought.

Even the one for Sandy's baby, Donald, was perfect. He'd bought that one, too, in case he was ever forced into this contingency plan. Barnicle's nanny was packing a bag for the child at her Rockaway home, preparing little Donald for the trip to the Bahamas.

Shine had been redirecting the three-quarters money to his tiny bank in Norman's Cay for the past two years via convoluted international wire transfers originating in Mexico. His flagship bank account was in Mexico City, which he had opened two years ago with the fifty thousand dollars from his very first “91” three-quarters operation. Since then he'd made the rest of his deposits at a branch of the Mexican bank in Manhattan. Through this branch he routinely redirected the money to Singapore. In Singapore it was transferred to a numbered account in Switzerland. Then finally it was sent to the account of “Ralph Emerson,” collector of rare books, in Norman's Cay. The name on the account matched the name on his new passport.

There was already five million dollars in Ralph Emerson's Norman's Cay account, and Shine had called his banker there earlier in the day to say he would be arriving in a private plane in the early morning. He told him he would be carrying a substantial cargo of American currency that he wanted to deposit in his bank. It would bring his total to fifteen million dollars.

“I'll be arriving with a small child and my adult daughter, who is not in the best of health,” Shine had told his banker, who also held the unofficial title of
island manager.

“I'll personally be waiting at the airport for you,” the banker had said. “I'll just debit your account for any special VIP customs tariffs.”

Here in Brooklyn, Shine's private twin-engine Cessna would be waiting at Floyd Bennett Field, the old airfield that was now part of Gateway National Recreation Area at the southern end of Brooklyn, just five miles from Windy Tip. Floyd Bennett Field had once been the most heavily used airport in New York, the place where Wrong Way Corrigan took off on his way to California and wound up in Ireland. It was also once a favorite airstrip of Amelia Earhart's. Today it was used for air shows and to train the NYPD Aviation Unit, where Shine first learned to fly.

Shine knew the deputy director of Gateway, and a yearly contribution to the Park Alliance gave him unlimited, unrecorded access to the airport for his private plane. Shine had used the plane only three times in two years; twice to travel to Norman's Cay to meet his banker–island manager and to buy a condo on the sea. And once, two years ago, to do a piece of business in Boston.

Sandy Fraser's child would be placed with a good expatriate American family, Shine had decided. Where Shine would personally see that the boy was well taken care of. And kept available in case Shine ever needed him. No one would ever find the child or John Shine or his daughter, Dorothea. In the Bahamas or later—when they traveled together through the four-star hotels, the best restaurants and VIP galas throughout the world—he'd find his daughter an appropriate husband, he thought. The man certainly would not be some dead-end cop like he was. Or Bobby Emmet.

As good a guy as Bobby was in John Shine's eyes, he was still just a
cop. Not for my daughter,
he thought.

No, Shine's daughter would have the privileged life her beautiful mother was denied because she got involved with a New York City cop. In the Ukraine they'd banished her to a life of disgrace, ridicule, and destitution. Not their daughter. She'd live like a queen.

Shine reflected on his plans to create a governor, to own and manipulate a man who could run New York and maybe, someday in the next century, even sit in the White House. He was taking Stone's bastard child with him in case Stone somehow managed to weather the storm Bobby Emmet had created.
If Stone does get elected,
he thought, t
hen I can always use the kid by remote control in the future.

If Stone was defeated, the kid would still have a good life. It was the least Shine could do now that his mother was gone. He would pick the child up at the nanny's house on the way to the airport.
Unfortunately for her,
he thought,
she's another loose end . . . .

“Open, my treasure.”

Dorothea opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue like a congregant ready to receive Holy Communion. Shine placed the sedative on her tongue and handed her a cup of hot, sweet tea. Although dressed in jeans and a heavy wool sweater, Dorothea trembled with fever, holding the teacup with two hands for warmth. She swallowed the pill with a grimace.

In addition to the three-milligram Haldol, John Shine gave Dorothea an antibiotic and two aspirin for the fever. And a multivitamin and an assortment of other vitamins and mineral supplements that Dr. Abrams had prescribed. She swallowed the pills, washing each one down with a sip of tea.

“Daddy, I'm scared,” she said in a thin singsongy voice.

“Scared of what, darling?”

“I'm cold and afraid,” she said, a spasm quaking through her, making her spill some of the tea. “I'm afraid I'll never be warm again. Mommy was always cold . . . always cold . . . never warm. . .”

“Drink your tea, Darla,” Shine said. “That's your new name. Your American name. Darla. Short for ‘my darling.' Okay? Daddy promises you'll be warm again. Very, very soon.”

“I miss the sun,” she said. She took another sip of tea.

“Cheer up, baby,” John Shine said. “We'll be leaving very soon. Going away.”

“Away?” Dorothea asked, clinging to the warmth of the teacup. “Where is that? Where are we now? Will there be sunshine?”

“You're here with me, darling,” John Shine said. “Where no one can hurt you. I'll take you away where we'll be even safer.”

“Will there be sunshine?”

“Yes, there will be sunshine,” John Shine said. “Every day.”

“Will Mother be there?”

“Mother is dead,” John Shine said. “That's why you searched and found me. Now no one will ever break us apart again, angel.”

“Mother is dead,” she said, and a tear came from her glazed eye. “That's why I came to America to find you . . .”

He dried her eyes and looked at Dorothea. God, he thought. She's beautiful. As beautiful as her mother. And now he had the money to give her the life her mother was denied, the life she deserves.

The police department didn't know what a favor they did me when they denied me my rightfully due pension,
John Shine thought. He'd promised himself he would get even. And it was so simple. He'd got even with Lou Barnicle, his former captain, who sandbagged him. Got even with the medical board, with their petty power. Got even with all the phonies in the brass. Now he'd taken more money from them than they would ever know. And he'd got even with them for making him stop seeing the woman he adored. Although the one true love of his life was now dead, driven to her grave in disgrace with a broken heart, John Shine had gotten back the next best thing, Dorothea.

No one will ever take her away from me again,
he thought. He was sure she would forget about Bobby Emmet, who would soon be dead or in jail forever. Even if Emmet eluded both fates, he'd never find them, living under brand-new names, in a brand-new country.

After she finished her tea, John Shine lay Dorothea on the couch and kissed her forehead. He placed a throw blanket over her. “Try to sleep, darling. I have to go make last-minute arrangements for our trip. A new doctor will also have to check you one last time.”

“Promise there will be sunshine, Daddy?”

B
obby pulled the Jeep to the curb on Eleventh Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn, across the street from Dr. Hector Perez's brownstone. He saw a Lexus with an MD license plate in the driveway. He called Perez on the cell phone.

“Dr. Perez, I know all about the blackmail scheme, the three-quarters pension racket,” Bobby said. “I need to talk to you about it before you wind up doing what Dr. Abrams did.”

“Who is this?” Perez asked.

“Come outside,” Bobby said. “I'll meet you on the street. I don't want to embarrass you in front of your wife.”

Less than a minute later Dr. Perez emerged from the ground-floor vestibule. Bobby got out of the Jeep and approached him on the street. Now Gleason sauntered across the street, and the three men stood by the carport.

“We better talk right now,” Bobby said softly.

“I know who you are,” Perez said defensively, looking from Bobby to Gleason. “I don't have to talk to you guys.”

“I didn't say you had to,” Bobby said. “I said I think you better.”

“Of course, you'll have to talk on the stand when I subpoena your corrupt ass,” Gleason said.

“What the hell do you want?” Perez asked, nervous, looking at his front door, hoping Nydia wouldn't see them.

“Okay, asshole, let's talk about the blackmail tape in Abrams's office,” Gleason said.