Black Irish (16 page)

Every third or fourth home on the block was vacant. There were old political posters in some of the windows—“Vote for O’Neill,” a mayoral candidate from three elections back—and yellowing newspaper in others. Dogs barked from behind rusting fences.

Abbie hustled up the block, looking for anything out of place. She ducked into the first backyard and saw nothing.

“Who’s that?” someone yelled. Abbie looked up; a woman in a nightdress was staring at her from an open second-story window.

“Buffalo PD. D
O
you know Billy Carney?”

The woman slammed the window shut.

She turned and headed back toward the street. Z’s black Ford
Explorer was just cruising up to the curb. The window slid down and Z turned to look at her from the driver’s seat.

“What’s up?”

“Billy Carney called me, sounded like he was under duress. We tracked the call here. Take the other end, see if anyone saw a man, mid-thirties, being hustled to a car. I need to find him.”

“Righto,” Z said. The Explorer’s engine revved and he moved off toward McKinley.

Turning, Abbie spotted a couple of young boys, clearly brothers, sitting on the steps of a swaybacked porch two houses east of her. They were watching her closely. She walked toward them.

“Hi, guys,” she said, reaching the bottom step and propping her foot on the third one, leaning on her thigh.

They nodded solemnly. The younger one, maybe four years old, was petting a fawn-colored guinea pig. He smiled. The other boy, four or five years older, didn’t.

“My name’s Detective Kearney and I’m with the Buffalo Police and I really need your help. Have you seen anything strange here in the last thirty minutes or so?”

“Strange how?” the older boy said. He was dressed in a powder-blue down jacket torn at the sleeve, with down feathers sticking out. His face looked like it had built up several layers of dirt and there were streaks of jam around his mouth. The green eyes were mistrustful.

“A group of men, maybe, leaving in a hurry. Strange cars on the street. People you haven’t seen before. Anything out of the ordinary.”

“You mean them guys—” the younger boy blurted out. The older one snapped his head left and hissed something under his breath.

“It’s okay,” Abbie said. “No one will get in trouble.”

The younger boy looked at his brother, then dropped his eyes.

“It’s okay. You can tell me, really.”

“Nuthin’,” he said resentfully.

The older boy turned to look at her, his face deadened, the eyes sharp. Abbie didn’t know if it was because her clothes weren’t secondhand or because she didn’t live on the block or because she was a cop. Such a plentiful buffet of resentments in the County.

“Listen, if you saw something, you need to tell me. I’m trying to help somebody who may be in a lot of trouble.” She looked at the younger boy, caught his eyes just as he was burying his gaze in the guinea pig’s fur. “If that were true, you’d want to help them, wouldn’t you?”

His mouth opened and he gave a tiny nod.

The older boy looked away down the street. “We just came out. We’ve been watching TV.”

She turned to the younger boy, raised her chin, then looked at the guinea pig. “He’s a cute one. What’s his name?”

“Gilbert.”

Abbie nodded and reached out to pet him. Slowly she pushed her fingers forward until she found the little boy’s hand resting in the guinea pig’s fur. He looked at her quickly and she smiled.

Abbie nodded to reassure him, then mouthed the word “Where?”

His eyes darted to the back of the older boy’s head, then flitted back to hers. They were wide with fear and the boy’s desire to help. She felt his index finger rise, sticking out of a hole in his mitten. He laid the finger over hers and held it there for a moment, warm and nervous. Then the boy slowly lifted the finger, his eyes on her all the time, and pointed past her left shoulder.

Abbie squeezed his finger and then dropped her hand to her side.

“Are you sure you didn’t see anything?” she said sternly to the older boy. “I don’t want to have to talk to your mom and dad.”

“My mom don’t talk to cops. And my dad’s in Forest Lawn.”

The cemetery. She nodded, the older boy turning to look at Z knocking on a door. Abbie mouthed “Thank you” to the little boy and walked away. “If you hear anything, tell me or my partner.”

The older boy laughed dryly.

She went to the house next door, knocked on the door. It was ridiculous to waste time protecting a five-year-old informant, but in the County he could be branded for life. After waiting for a minute or two, she stepped down the porch stairs and headed across the street.

“I’m going to try this side,” she called to Z. The house the little boy had pointed to was a shabby two-story affair, painted dark green
with white trim. As she walked up the driveway, she saw the screen door at the side flapping open. She pulled back the flap on her jacket and hugged the side of the building as she approached.

When she got within a few feet of the doorframe, she saw that the black wooden door was wide open.

Abbie pulled out her gun, pushed the door with her foot, and stuck her head around the doorframe. There was a worn set of stairs directly ahead, and a doormat on the floor that read “Good Morning Sunshine.” She walked quickly up the steps, pushed a door with her toe and found an empty bathroom. To the other side was the kitchen.

The house gave the feeling of emptiness. She walked through the first floor briskly. In the living room, sparsely furnished with mismatched chairs and a pale green couch, she saw a coffee table with a whiskey bottle and a pack of Marlboro Lights and an ashtray. In the ashtray, a cigarette butt was smoking and a piece of paper gave off a thin wisp of smoke.

“Abbie?”

“In here.”

Z came up the stairs and was standing beside her. Abbie picked up the paper, blew softly on the edge, and pressed it gently between her fingers.

“What is it?”

She held the paper up to the light. A blackened section flaked away and fell to the floor, but a one-inch-square piece was just browned over and not completely burned. Z craned to have a look.

“Marty … Collins,” he read.

“Billy told me one of the members of the Clan was named Marty. So this is him. Find out where he lives, will you?”

Z nodded and began to punch some numbers into his cell phone, ducking out the front door for better reception.

Abbie studied the note. It had apparently been written very fast. The strokes got lighter at the end, with the last letters almost unreadable. It was the way you wrote if you had to use one hand. Or if someone was standing nearby who wouldn’t have been pleased to see you scratch out a few words.

You had five seconds to write something and you wrote “Marty Collins,”
she thought.
Why didn’t you tell me where they were taking you, Billy? I’d rather save you than this Marty Collins. I’d rather save both of you but if I had to choose I’d choose you. Is this note the equivalent of going to your execution with your head held high and in total silence, so your executioners later shake their heads in admiration? Really, you shouldn’t have bothered
.

Or did you tell me where to find you and they burned that part of the note? Bad luck. Lousy, no-good, rotten luck, the same you’ve had for all your life
.

The note was half-burned. But Billy didn’t smoke. He still had that ex-athlete’s thing of trying to look healthy at least.

So he’d had an escort.

Z walked in.

“Martin Collins is a County lawyer who works out of his home.”

“Where?”

“Fifty-four Potters Road. Right on the park.”

She was past him and out the door.

The Saab’s engine was revving so loud it sounded like parts were going to come up through the hood. Abbie braked, took a corner onto Abbott, moving the wheel half an inch at the last second, just avoiding a silver-haired woman in a checked coat who was crossing the avenue going south.

“Easy!” Z yelled.

She accelerated. As they came to a red light, she hit the horn and didn’t even touch the brakes. On her right she saw a cement truck jerking to a stop, its hood popping up and down, and heard the muffled sound of air brakes letting out a huge
SSSHHHOOOOO
.

She came to Shenandoah and made the right, streaked down the small street in five seconds, two-story homes flashing by on both sides, then another right onto Potters. She checked her mirror and hit the accelerator. The park was on her left, the snow lit violet by the afternoon sun. Collins’s house was three blocks away.

She swept past a line of parked cars, then suddenly hit the brakes. The car rocked to a stop.

“It’s three houses down, Ab.”

“I know. But Billy Carney said he’d been followed by a green Taurus. And look what’s sitting out front.”

Z raised his eyebrows. Abbie pointed her chin toward 54 Potters Road, about twenty yards ahead on the right side. Z spotted the green Taurus sitting by the curb, the last in the line of parked cars. Smoke was wisping from its tailpipe.

“Got it,” Z said.

Abbie pressed the gas and coasted up to the Taurus. Two heads, white males, in the front seats. She was out before Z had opened his door.

Gun out and pointed down thirty degrees. Watching the driver’s head. He saw her coming, a coffee cup rising slowly to his mouth. When it was at his lips, she tapped on the glass with the tip of her gun.

The cop glanced left, his blue eyes aware of the gun. Then he turned to look straight ahead and was lowering the coffee cup to his lap when Abbie pulled the door open. As he turned, she recognized him. She’d seen him downtown coming out of the Chief’s office, striding through headquarters looking important. They called him Q. A beat cop, obviously moonlighting for the boys at the Gaelic Club, protecting the secrets of the County.

He looked at her like she smelled bad.

“Where’s Collins?” Abbie said.

“You have a warrant, Kearney?”

“Where is he?”

The other man leaned over.

“How’s your dad?” he said.

Brown mustache, older.

“He’s fine.”

“Tell him I said hi.”

“I will. What’s your name?”

The man’s face went blank and he sat back in his seat, staring straight ahead.

“Where’s Marty Collins? It’s urgent.”

Q raised the cup of coffee and both men looked as if they were watching a drive-in movie through the dirty windshield.

Abbie grabbed Q’s collar and leaned back, then jerked him head-first out of the car, the cup teetering back and the hot coffee spilling down his shirt.

“
Hey!
You crazy or something?”

Z had the other guy out by then, pushed up against the car. He whispered something Abbie couldn’t hear. She had Q spread-eagled on the hood of the car, facing the park.

Abbie leaned in over his shoulder, her lips two inches from Q’s ear.

“Where’s Collins?”

Q shook his head. He was beefy. Looked like he lifted weights, but his neck was thick with fat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What were you doing out here? Bird-watching?”

“You know who I am?”

“I know you were the one who was supposed to be watching Marty Collins when the killer cut his face off.”

His head snapped left and one big blue eye swept over her face before he looked back down.

“What are you talking about?”

“Collins is next. It’s happening. Soon. Maybe even now. Is he inside?”

Three beats.

“Yeah.”

Abbie called to Z and they hustled the men into the house. The front door was open and Kearney left Q in the front hall as she ran up the wide staircase and checked upstairs. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, all tidy and empty. She did a second look-through, saw the little door cut into the hallway ceiling, got a chair from the second
bedroom and pulled it underneath. She reached up and pulled the handle down.

The attic smelled like mice and Christmas, and it was empty of everything except boxes and spider webs.

Z met her at the foot of the staircase.

“Nothing here. Basement’s clean.”

Abbie stared at Q, who was standing by the front door, leaning against the jamb. He stared defiantly back.

“He has to be here. No one’s gone in or out.”

“Does he ever leave the house, for any reason?”

“Just to go running, but we follow behind in the car.”

“Did he go running today?”

Q shook his head. “No, he said he hates the smell of the exhaust when the wind changes.”

“So maybe he went running without you. Check upstairs for his sneakers and whatever he wears when he goes out.”

Q looked at Brown Mustache.

“Now.”

The two men moved up the stairs, and Abbie went to the kitchen window. The house backed on Cazenovia. She could see a triangular flag fluttering in between pale branches. The golf course.

The stairs pounded above her head.

“His running gear is gone, but I swear …”

Collins could have gone out the back, cut through the trees and straight onto the golf course.

“When does he usually go running?”

“One o’clock”

Abbie checked her watch. “That was three hours ago. You dumbasses have been guarding an empty house for
three hours?
”

“Let’s go,” she called to Z.

When Abbie swung out and made the right into the park, she saw the Taurus pull in behind her.

M
ARTY
C
OLLINS CAME TO, BREATHING RAGGEDLY, HIS HEAD HANGING DOWN
on his chest. His eyes swam with tears clotting with the cold, then focused on the New Balance logo on his blue zippered sweatshirt. Past the sweatshirt, the snow was red and pitted. A second later the pain cleaved into his brain and he screamed and screamed.

I must have been knocked into the bushes that lined the side of the creek and caught in their thorns
, he thought when he’d run out of breath.
I’m going to die here
. He looked up. The sun was dropping over the branches above; the afternoon was turning to dusk. How had no one found him yet?