3 Quarters (48 page)

After some trial and error, Bobby finally found the right panel in the oak stairwell wall. Easing it open, he silently signaled for Forrest Morgan to follow him. They descended to the bottom of the soundless stone stairs and paused for one deep final breath. Bobby and Morgan exchanged a pensive look and then quickly burst into the twenty-by-twenty-foot underground bunker, waving guns.

“Dorothea, get down,” Bobby yelled.

Bobby and Morgan were instantly blinded by the spotlight behind the heavy armchair where John Shine sat. Bobby and Morgan tried to aim in that direction, but in the blinding light they could not get a clear shot.

Shine was only momentarily startled. He dropped quickly to the floor, firing a pistol he pulled from his waistband. Bobby and Morgan dove in different directions, hitting the floor, returning fire into the blinding halo of light.

“Oh, my God!” screamed Dr. Perez, dragging Dorothea from the couch to the floor with him.

Shine grimaced with back pain but scrambled for cover behind the armchair and shot again at Bobby. Morgan fired at the spotlight, blowing it out, leaving just the overhead lights and a table lamp illuminating the room.

Shine fired three rounds toward Bobby and Morgan, keeping them pinned down. Bobby let loose with a return barrage of shots in his general direction, but the rounds lodged harmlessly like spitballs into the soft cushions of the big chair. Shine popped up from behind the chair to fire, and Bobby shot him, the bullet tearing through his left arm, blood splattering the wall behind him. Shine grunted loudly and disappeared behind the chair again.

Forrest Morgan rolled behind a coffee table, under a softly shining lamp and ripped off several shots from his 9 mm Glock automatic. The room went momentarily silent, and then Shine popped out like a defiant target in a shooting gallery and fired back at Forrest Morgan. A bullet tore into Morgan's right shoulder and sent a pink fog misting across the lamplight. A second bullet exploded into Morgan's left thigh, and he stumbled backward, pulling the lamp off the end table as he fell, the lightbulb exploding, casting deeper shadows into the dim room.

Bobby crawled on his belly toward the armchair, firing three more times. Two bullets zinged over his head, and he lay flat for a moment on the deep pile carpet, frantically reloading his spent revolver.

“Dorothea, I'm here,” Bobby shouted, drowning out the sound of the reloading. “It's Bobby. I'm here, Dorothea . . .”

“You're not Bobby,” Dorothea said in her faint singsongy voice. “Bobby is dead. You leave my daddy alone . . .”

And then Dorothea stood, frail and disturbed, and sauntered through the room, bumping into furniture, falling to one knee, getting back up, desperately reaching for the walls, as if searching for something.

“Get down, Dorothea,” Shine screamed.

“Dorothea it
is
me,
Bobby
,” he shouted, and rose to a half crouch to try to get to her. Dorothea looked at him, her eyes blinking, as if trying to decide if she were dreaming or awake. Shine fired at Bobby, but the bullet whizzed by him, shattering a vase filled with flowers. Bobby fell flat to the floor.

“Bobby?” Dorothea said, the amphetamine making her progressively more lucid. “Daddy? Is that really Bobby, Daddy?”

“No, Dorothea, he's lying,” Shine shouted.

“I'm not lying, Dorothea,” Bobby said softly. “ ‘
Ya tebe kohayu.
' St. Peter's Church. The red light on the top of the Empire State Building.”

“He's telling you the truth, lady,” Morgan shouted. “He don't do that often, but he is now. He is Bobby Emmet . . .”

“Bobby,” Dorothea whispered. Then Bobby heard her sigh softly, like a lost kitten's sad lament.

“Get down, Dorothea,” Bobby shouted, as he searched the room for John Shine. Dorothea continued to grope at the walls, knocking down a calendar and a wall clock.

“Bobby
 . . .” she said.

And then Dorothea found what she'd been looking for—the light switch! She swiped it in a downward motion, and suddenly the room went completely dark. A darkness as total as Bobby'd ever known.

John Shine began to laugh as Bobby tried to adjust to the menacing blackness.

“She's been in the dark for a year and a half,” Shine said, moving confidently in the accustomed gloom. “She doesn't even know who she is, never mind who you are. Only I know who she really is.”

Bobby could tell that Shine was still moving in the dark, arrogantly familiar with the layout. There were no windows, so not even a dull glow found its way into the sunken dungeon.

“I know more than you think I know, John,” Bobby said, eager to keep Shine talking until he could track the sound of his voice to get his hands on him.

“Like what for instance?” Shine said, his voice coming at Bobby from his left side now. “What do you think you know?”

“I know you ran the whole three-quarters pension operation,” Bobby said. “That you ordered Tom Larkin killed because he figured out you had an architect named Barbara Lacy murdered in my apartment and then had her cremated and made to look like it was Dorothea. Then you had Sandy Fraser killed because she was finally going to tell me her child's father was really Gerald Stone . . .”

“I wish the fuck you woulda told
me
this shit,” Morgan shouted from the gloom.

“Sandy . . .” Dorothea said from the darkness. “Daddy, did you really hurt Sandy?”

“He had her killed, Dorothea,” Bobby said.

“You're good, Bobby,” Shine said, and this time his voice came from yet another part of the room. “But then again,
I
taught you.”

Bobby could not get his bearings. He could hear Dr. Perez saying prayers in Spanish in the dark and Forrest Morgan moaning in pain.

“You ain't goin' nowhere, Shine,” Morgan shouted. “So give this crazy-assed shit up, man.”

“Oh, be quiet, you insignificant dust mite,” Shine said. “Can't you see there is a serious tête-à-tête going on here between teacher and student? Show some respect.”

“Fuck you, psycho,” Morgan shouted.

“I also know you were never married, John,” Bobby said. “That there was never any boating accident.”

This brought a long silence from the pitch dark.

“But I know about the woman,” Bobby said. “The diplomat's wife. Slomowicz's wife. Whose maiden name was ‘Dubrow.' ”

“That is quite enough,” Shine said, his voice suddenly sharp with anger.

“And that she was recalled back to the Ukraine after they discovered the affair she had with you,” Bobby said. “But she was pregnant, with your child. With Dorothea.”

“Enough!” Shine angrily boomed, his voice closer now.

“Then after the Iron Curtain fell, you searched for them, didn't you?” Bobby said, listening to Shine shuffle in the dark. “Moira Farrell helped you get a visa. You even traveled to the Ukraine. Came up empty . . .”

“You have no idea how much pain, the fucking
heartache
I lived with all those years,” Shine said softly, almost as if hoping for understanding.

“Then one day a couple of years ago little Dorothea showed up at your doorstep, as a beautiful grown-up woman,” Bobby said, searching for a reply in the dense murk. “Like a war baby. A Cold War baby. She looked you up because her outcast mother had always told her about her real father in America. A mother who died after years of being disgraced and ostracized back home. Dorothea told me how her mother had lived a terrible, lonely life. That she lived only to educate Dorothea, to pass on all that she knew to her daughter, who might someday have a life. She never told me why there was no father. Now I know why. Her mother was considered a cheap, cheating, traitorous wife who had embarrassed her diplomat husband and her country by having a
baby
by some lowbred American cop.”

“You make it sound so tawdry,” Shine said, and Bobby could hear him moving a chair in front of him in the dark. “But I loved that woman all my life. Loved my daughter I never knew . . .”

“Then Dorothea came in search of her father in America and found a crackpot,” Bobby said. “A man incapable of having another woman or another child and who chose instead to exploit everyone in power until he had the power himself.”

“How come you never told me none of this shit, Bobby, man,” Forrest Morgan shouted. “I would have brought me a net and six-pack of shrinks.”

“It would have been so perfect,” Shine said, reflectively. “But you had to come sniffing around. I only asked Dorothea to amuse you, have dinner with you, to find out what you knew about me and her. To play along with this joke on my friend and keep it a secret that she was my daughter. At least until I learned what you knew about the business I was involved in. And then, the silly girl—just like her lovely, silly mother—she fell in love with a New York cop. I pleaded with her. Begged her to drop you. But she said she was going to marry you. I couldn't let that happen now, could I? I couldn't let
my
Dorothea be taken away from me again. The only way to get her away from you, and you away from me and my little operation, was to arrange for both of you to disappear.”

“You call twenty million dollars a little operation?” Bobby said.

“That was only this year's take, Bobby, baby,” Shine said with a proud laugh. “The Stone campaign has already spent twenty from last year's take . . .”

“I'll be double goddamned,” Morgan said from the darkness.

“Not much to own a New York governor, huh?” Shine said, still chuckling. “Mr. Emerson, who coined the phrase ‘man in the street,' advised people like us to ‘hitch your wagon to a star,' Bobby. I did.”

“And in case Stone tries to renege on his promises, you arranged for another ace in the hole,” Bobby said. “A card from your own deck, when you used Barnicle and Moira Farrell to set up Sandy Fraser with Gerald Stone, Mr. Family Values. Talked her into having horny Stone's baby so you could blackmail him for as long as he held office.”

“Sandy was an attractive woman who wasn't getting any younger,” Shine said. “She wanted a child. She found Stone attractive. She was more than willing to use
him
. He was willing to use
her
for his own pleasure, the hypocritical prick. So why shouldn't I use two users? I would know how to control a man like that. Tell him what laws to sign, which ones to veto, who to pardon, who to hire and fire. What programs to fund, which ones to cancel . . . even when to run for
president.”

“You are one outta-space motherfucker,” Forrest Morgan said. “What the fuck kind of drugs you on?”

“Just like you blackmailed the doctors on the pension boards with videotapes of murdered hookers,” Bobby said, gripping his pistol. “You were going to use Sandy's kid as blackmail against a family-values politician. Problem was, Sandy wound up loving the kid more than the greedy plan. She wanted out. You wouldn't allow that.”

Bobby felt a cold circle of steel on the back of his skull as Shine knelt over him with the gun. Shine removed Bobby's gun from his hand and slid it across the floor.

“Couldn't,” Shine said softly, and then sighed. “Just like I couldn't let Dorothea continue with you, Bobby. I couldn't lose her again. So I kept Dorothea here with me. Safe. From you and all the others. Helping her forget . . .”

“Like Kate Clementine's uncle,” Bobby said.

“I understood him,” Shine said. “Yes, I could relate to how much he loved his niece; that he wanted to protect her from this fucked-up world.”

“You loved Dorothea so much that you had Sandy killed; Dorothea's only friend,” Bobby said.

“Daddy, did you have Sandy killed?” Dorothea demanded, her voice stronger now.

“And now it's a shame you got in my way, Bobby. I never wanted to have to kill you myself. I tried to have you taken care of a half-dozen times. But in the end, you really must rely on yourself. You were a dear friend and a more than worthy enemy. But look what being an honest cop got you. Jail. Now, like your father, death. Emerson said, ‘Good men must not obey the laws too well.' Now, Bobby, it's over. I gotta go.”

He heard Shine's gun cock.

“Daddy, did you kill Sandy?” Dorothea said.

“Get down, Dorothea,” Shine said. “We'll be leaving soon.”

“You know what my favorite Emerson quote is, John?” Bobby said, trying anything to keep Shine talking.

“No,” Shine said eagerly. “Which one?”

“He said, ‘I hate quotations.' ”

Suddenly Dorothea switched on the lights and screamed, “Bobby! Daddy!”

In the blinding glare, Bobby swung a wild hand at a stunned John Shine, knocking his gun out of his hand. Bobby smacked him hard enough to tumble him to the floor. Morgan trained his gun in Shine's direction and fired. Empty. “Motherfucker!” Morgan shouted and hurled the gun at Shine, hitting him in the chest. Shine groaned, and Bobby lunged at his shadowy form. Shine hit Bobby with a crunching right hand to the temple that made Bobby see a burst of tiny dancing sparkles. Bobby threw a left hook into the bottom of Shine's spinal column, making him wail with anguish. But, ever in terrible pain, Shine kept scrambling for his pistol. Bobby rolled across the floor toward his own gun.

Shine reached his gun first.

He swung, took dead aim at Bobby Emmet, and squeezed the trigger as Dorothea Dubrow lurched from the light switch by the wall, in between the two men.

“No, Daddy!” Dorothea shouted.

“No!” Bobby shouted. “Dorothea, No!”

John Shine fired.

“Bobby,” she whispered.

Dorothea Dubrow absorbed the bullet intended for Bobby Emmet. The impact sent her sprawling across Bobby's lap. Perez, from his prone position, kicked Bobby's gun toward him. Bobby snatched it up. The bullet that Dorothea had just taken had left Bobby emotionally numb. Bobby fired past the dying Dorothea with a reflexive, mechanical response. His bullet entered Shine's forehead like a rivet. Shine remained in a seated position for three more suspended seconds, his astonished eyes at first refusing to accept the death that had already arrived. Then he slowly collapsed to the floor.