The Barbed-Wire Kiss (24 page)

They let him out the next afternoon. The CAT scan results had been negative. There was no skull fracture, no buildup of blood around his brain.

In the end, he didn’t even need a story. By the time they processed him out, the resident who’d treated him was nowhere to be found, and the one who’d taken his place had only the mildest interest in Harry’s condition. He wrote him a prescription for Percocet and told him to make an appointment with his own doctor as soon as possible.

A male nurse’s aide wheeled him through the electronic doors to the curb, where Ray’s Toyota was waiting. The rain was gone, the day bright. But Harry felt cold, as if he had carried a chill with him from inside the hospital.

He wore the T-shirt and jeans Ray had brought him from the house, carried his torn and bloody clothes in a plastic bag on his lap. His cast was nestled in a light blue nylon sling with Velcro snaps. They’d taken the cotton from his nostrils, but the tape remained, an X across the bridge of his nose. On the left side of his mouth, two molars were loose. When he probed them with his tongue, it sent a dull ache through his jaw.

Ray opened the passenger side door. Harry thanked the aide and climbed out of the wheelchair, waved Ray away. He eased into the passenger seat, wincing at the pain in his ribs. He put the plastic bag on the floor, pulled the door shut.

“I won’t ask how you feel,” Ray said as he got behind the wheel.

“Good.”

Neither of them spoke again until they were on the Parkway, heading south.

“I called that number you gave me,” Ray said. “She answered the phone, sounded all right. But I took a drive out there anyway, parked on the street, watched the house. She went out about ten this morning, with Fallon, in a Lexus. Some big guy was driving, not Dunleavy.”

“How did she look?”

“She’s not exactly my type.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Relax. Fine as far as I could tell. I got a pretty good look through the binoculars, and she seemed to be all right. No marks on her that I could see. I guess Fallon took it all out on you.”

“He took pictures of me afterward.”

“For what?”

“To show her, I guess.”

Ray said quietly, “Son of a bitch.”

They drove in silence for a few moments.

“I can swing by there again tonight if you want. Follow them if they go anywhere, try to get a closer look.”

Harry shook his head, powered down the window to feel the breeze on his face.

After a while, Ray said, “Let me know how you want to handle this.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know goddamn well what I mean. You say the word. I’ll back you up any way you want.”

Harry watched the traffic.

“I’m not sure if I’ve quite figured it out myself yet,” he said. “I might ask you to do me a couple of favors later in the week. We’ll see what happens.”

“It’s your call. But don’t cut me out of this now. You did it before and look what it got you, a busted elbow and a broken nose. I don’t have that many friends that I can allow this kind of shit to go on.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Somebody will. No way in hell this goes unanswered.”

They rode in silence again. Ray watched him out of the corner of his eye.

“You okay, partner?”

Harry looked out the window, breathed in.

“No,” he said.

•  •  •

They parked in Harry’s side yard. The door to the barn was pulled shut.

“Your car’s in there,” Ray said. “I had it driven back. Let’s go inside and get you settled.”

In the kitchen, the red light of the answering machine was flashing insistently.

“Think you’ll be able to get around all right?” Ray said.

“Yeah, good enough. It’s my arm that’s broken, not my legs.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be driving anywhere anytime soon. At least not until you’ve had a day or so to rest. If you think of anything you need, or there’s any place you want to go, give me a call. I’m not that far away.”

“Thanks. I’ve put you through enough already, I think.”

“Come outside with me for a minute. I’ve got something for you.”

Harry followed him out to the Toyota. Ray opened the trunk, shifted things around inside, took out a gray plastic case.

“It would make me feel a lot better if you took this,” he said.

Ray undid latches and opened the case. Inside, on gray packing foam, was a Smith and Wesson .38 with a two-inch barrel and mother-of-pearl grips. Ray picked it up.

“Can’t hit shit with it at over twenty feet,” he said. “But it has a lot of punch up close.”

He popped open the empty cylinder, held out the gun. Harry took it, felt its weight.

“Easy to maneuver with one hand,” Ray said. “No slide to work. And it’ll stop anything you point it at. Here.”

Ray reached into a jacket pocket, came out with a baggie filled with shells, short stubby .38s with blue tips.

“Glaser Safetys,” he said. “Teflon-tipped. Hit ’em anywhere and that’s all she wrote. There’s twelve of them in here. They’re illegal, but I don’t have to tell you that.”

Harry snapped the cylinder shut, turned the gun over in his hand.

“You think I’ve lost it,” he said.

“Lost what?”

“My edge, my confidence. My balls. You think having a gun around will make me feel better, give me a psychological advantage.”

Ray shrugged.

Harry looked at the .38, tucked it into his sling, saw it stayed there without sliding out.

“Thanks,” he said.

“It’s clean. But unlicensed. So if you have to use it, throw it in the river afterward. Do whatever you have to do, just don’t get caught with it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Ray closed the case, replaced it in the trunk, and shut the lid. He put out his hand and Harry took it.

“Remember what I said in the car,” Ray said.

Harry nodded, held his grip.

“Call me anytime, day or night,” Ray said. “If I’m not there, leave a message. Home or office, it doesn’t matter. You’re not alone in this.”

“Thanks. I know that.”

“
Vaya con dios
, partner. Don’t forget who your friends are.”

He slept twelve hours that night, woke dry mouthed and aching, the noon sun high in the sky.

He showered carefully, holding the cast outside the curtain to keep it dry. He toweled off as best he could, looked at himself in the mirror. Both his eyes were still blackened, the color fading to a sickly yellow. A scab bisected his left eyebrow, and there was a plum-colored bruise on his right side, red scrapes on his chest and arms.

He fought his way into a short-sleeved sweatshirt and jeans, then attached the Velcro strips of the sling behind his neck, pulled it around him like a bra, and nestled the cast into it. His elbow throbbed with a dull, wet ache.

In the kitchen, he scrambled eggs and made instant coffee. He drank as much as he could, but the hot liquid sent waves of pain through his loose teeth. He ate half the eggs, threw the rest away.

There’d been three messages on his answering machine when he got home from the hospital, the first from Bobby, leaving his number in North Carolina, the other two from Wesniak. He played the messages back again, wrote down Bobby’s number, reset the tape.

After a while, he went out to the barn, wrestled the door open one-handed. Sunlight flooded the interior, illuminating dust motes in the air.

The driver’s side window of the Mustang was cracked through, sagging. The dent in the door was deep enough that it would need to be pulled and compounded. Someone had raked a key or knife along the side of the car as well. There were deep gouges in the paint, stretching from the door to the left rear quarter panel.

He opened the passenger side door, popped the glove box. The notebook was still there. He took it with him back to the house.

He waited, listening to Muzak, while the receptionist connected him.

When Ray came on the line, Harry said, “Favor time.”

“That didn’t take long.”

“I’ve got two vehicles and plate numbers. I’m looking for registration, addresses, et cetera.”

“Hang on a second.” Then, “Go.”

He read him the numbers and descriptions.

“I’ll get back to you,” Ray said. “May take a while, things are hopping here today.”

“No rush.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Better than yesterday. Worse than tomorrow.”

“That’s about as well as can be expected, I guess. Anything else I can get you?”

“A bottle of scotch and a fistful of Percocet.”

“Better hold off on the scotch for a while. You can get the Percocet through normal channels. I’ll call back.”

He was sitting on the porch, his feet propped on the railing, when the dark green Crown Victoria came up the driveway. Eagleman was at the wheel, Wesniak beside him. They pulled into the side yard, got out, both wearing suits and sunglasses. He raised a hand to them, let his feet come down.

He stood up as they came across the lawn. Wesniak stopped at the porch steps, looked up at him. He took off his sunglasses, folded them and tucked them into a pocket, slowly shook his head.

“I got your messages,” Harry said. “I just haven’t had a chance to get back to you.”

“I was worried something had happened to you. Looks like it did.”

“Come on inside.”

They followed him into the living room. Eagleman was chewing a toothpick, studying him.

“Looks like somebody punched your ticket,” he said.

“I got mugged.”

Eagleman grunted, a noise with no meaning.

“Where?” Wesniak said.

“Brooklyn. My car broke down. I was walking to a gas station and I got jumped.”

“They catch the guy?”

“No.”

“Hell of a thing,” Wesniak said. “Mind if we have a seat?”

He pulled up a chair, sat down. Eagleman stayed by the door.

“You’re in bad shape,” Wesniak said. “Was there more than one?”

“Yeah.”

“You file a police report?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He sat on the couch, winced at the pain in his ribs.

“No point. They would have been long gone.”

“They get much?”

“My wallet. About fifty dollars.”

“Why they decide to beat up on you like that?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t explain themselves.”

“Hell of a thing,” Wesniak said again. “Reason we’re here, we were just having lunch down the road, thought we’d drop by, save you a call. Or a trip. From the looks of you, that was probably a good idea.”

“I was going to call you today. I’ve been pretty busy.”

“I can see that. You know, it’s been a while since I’ve been out here. I grew up in this part of the county, you know that?”

“No.”

“My father had a chicken farm in Manalapan, not far from here. I close my eyes and I can still smell it. They sold it all back in the sixties. Part of that land is where the high school is now.”

“Progress.”

“I guess. But it’s hard to even recognize anything around here these days. All these rich people from New York coming down, buying up all the land, building those big ugly houses. New Jersey peckerwoods like us are an endangered species.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’d been thinking a lot since the last time we talked. About this whole Cortez business. I get the sense it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t know exactly. I just can’t shake the feeling there’s something going on here I’m not seeing. Like it’s right in front of my face, but I’m missing it. That’s why I wanted to go over your story again, maybe find something I missed the first time.”

“There’s nothing more than what I told you. In fact, I’m surprised you’re taking such an interest. It’s a drug killing, isn’t it? Hardly what you’d call a redball.”

“Yeah, I know. Not that unusual, is it, this sort of thing? People get greedy, stupid. It’s a dangerous business by nature. Sooner or later they all get what’s coming to them.”

“Usually.”

“That’s right. Usually. Not always.”

“So what’s bothering you?”

“Well …” He sat back. “This bit about looking for Cortez. About his owing a friend of yours some money for engine work. Timing’s odd, isn’t it, that all this happened just before someone decided to take him out?”

“Maybe not. Maybe Cortez owed a lot of people money.”

“Could be. The last time we talked, you were reluctant to give me the name of this friend, the one you were doing the favor for. Has that changed?”

“No. Like I said, he’s not involved.”

“Then, there’s my problem.”

Harry looked at him, leaned forward.

“I don’t know about the timing,” he said. “But my looking for Cortez had nothing to do with drugs. Or anything else that may have been behind the deaths of those two men.”

“How can you be sure? Maybe your friend didn’t tell you the whole story. Maybe it was more than five hundred dollars.”

Harry shook his head.

“I want to believe you, Harry, I do. After all, if you—or this friend of yours—were involved in Cortez’s drug dealing, I have to think you would have come up with a better story at the airport. Or more likely, you never would have called it in in the first place.”

“Probably.”

“There you go. So, on one level, I have to think what you’re telling me is mostly the truth. On the other, I still have this feeling there are things you’re not telling me at all, either to protect someone or to cover yourself. Is that the case?”

“No.”

Wesniak nodded. “It’s good to hear you say that. And I do understand you might have a perfectly good reason, in your mind, for keeping something from me. But I guarantee you, whatever logic you’re using, it’s a mistake. The sooner you realize that, the better for all of us.”

“If you think I can tell you anything that’s going to break this case for you, you’re wrong. I don’t know who killed Jimmy Cortez and his cousin. I don’t know who they were selling drugs to or buying drugs from, if that’s what they were doing.”

“All the more reason you should tell us who this friend is, so we can talk to him and rule both of you out. Believe me, I’d like to forget all about your involvement in this. But right now, you’re the only string I have to pull on. I’m not about to let go.”