contact with the sender than the name and address on the check itself-which I saw in the mail at Kartch’s house in Sotherton. So I knew right away from the discrepancy that he was lying. And the reason was obvious.”
This was too much for Nardo. “You knew? Then why the hell didn’t you tell us so we could pick him up?”
“Because I knew what he was doing and why he was doing it, and I had no interest in stopping him.”
Nardo looked like he’d stepped into an alternate universe where the flies were swatting the people.
A sharp clicking noise drew Gurney’s attention back to the bed. The old woman was tapping her red glass shoes together like Dorothy leaving Oz on her way home to Kansas. The gun-in-the-goose on Dermott’s lap was now pointed directly at Gurney. Dermott was making an effort-at least Gurney hoped it required an effort-to appear unfazed by the Kartch revelation. He articulated his words with a peculiar precision.
“Whatever game you’re playing, Detective, I’m the one who’s going to end it.”
Gurney, with all the undercover acting experience he could bring to the moment, tried to speak with the confidence of a man who had a concealed Uzi zeroed in on his enemy’s chest. “Before you make a threat,” he said softly, “be sure you understand the situation.”
“Situation? I fire, you die. I fire again, he dies. The baboons come through the door, they die. That’s the situation.”
Gurney closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, uttering a deep sigh. “Do you have any idea… any idea at all…?” he began, then shook his head wearily. “No. No, of course you don’t. How could you?”
“Any idea of what, Detective?” Dermott used the title with exaggerated sarcasm.
Gurney laughed. It was an unhinged sort of laugh, meant to raise new questions in Dermott’s mind, but actually energized by a rising tide of emotional chaos in himself.
“Guess how many men I’ve killed,” he whispered, glaring at Dermott with a wild intensity-praying that the man wouldn’t recognize the time-consuming purpose of his desperate ad-libbing, praying that the Wycherly cops would soon take note that Nardo was missing. Why the hell hadn’t they noticed already? Or had they? The glass shoes continued to click.
“Stupid cops kill people all the time,” said Dermott. “I couldn’t care less.”
“I don’t mean just any men. I mean men like Jimmy Spinks. Guess how many men like him I’ve killed.”
Dermott blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about killing drunks. Ridding the world of alcoholic animals, exterminating the scum of the earth.”
Once again there was an almost imperceptible vibration around Dermott’s mouth. He had the man’s attention, no doubt about that. Now what? What else but ride the wave. There was no other transportation in sight. He composed his words as he spoke them.
“Late one night in the Port Authority bus terminal, when I was a rookie cop, I was told to roust some derelicts from the rear entryway. One wouldn’t leave. I could smell the stink of the whiskey from ten feet off. I told him again to get out of the building, but instead of going out the door, he started coming toward me. He pulled a kitchen knife out of his pocket-a little knife with a serrated blade like you’d use to slice an orange. He brandished the knife in a threatening manner and ignored my order to drop it. Two witnesses who saw the confrontation from the escalator swore that I shot him in self-defense.” He paused and smiled. “But that’s not true. If I’d wanted to, I could have subdued him without even breathing hard. Instead I shot him in the face and blew his brains out the back of his head. You know why I did that, Gregory?”
“Dickie-Dickie-Dickie Duck,” said the old woman in a rhythm quicker than the clicking of her shoes. Dermott’s mouth opened a fraction of an inch, but he said nothing.
“I did it because he looked like my father,” said Gurney with an angrily rising voice, “looked like my father looked the night he smashed a teapot on my mother’s head-a fucking stupid teapot with a fucking stupid clown face on it.”
“Your father wasn’t much of a father,” said Dermott coldly. “But then again, Detective, neither were you.”
The leering accusation removed any doubt in Gurney’s mind about the extent of Dermott’s knowledge. At that moment he seriously considered the option of absorbing a bullet to get his hands on Dermott’s throat.
The leer intensified. Perhaps Dermott sensed Gurney’s discomfort. “A good father should protect his four-year- old son, not let him get run over, not let the driver get away.”
“You piece of shit,” muttered Gurney.
Dermott giggled, seemingly crazed with delight. “Vulgar, vulgar, vulgar-and I thought you were a fellow poet. I hoped we could keep trading verses. I had a little ditty all ready for our next exchange. Tell me what you think of it. ‘A hit-and-run without a trace, / the star detective fell on his face. / What did the little boy’s mother say / when you came home alone that day?’”
An eerie animal sound rose from Gurney’s chest, a strangled eruption of rage. Dermott was transfixed.
Nardo had apparently been waiting for the moment of maximum distraction. His muscular right arm accelerated up and around in a mighty circular overhand motion, hurling the unopened Four Roses bottle with tremendous force at Dermott’s head. As Dermott sensed the movement and began to swivel the gun-in-the-goose toward Nardo, Gurney launched himself in a headlong diving leap at the bed, landing chest-first on the goose, just as the thick glass base of the full whiskey bottle smashed squarely into Dermott’s temple. The revolver discharged beneath Gurney, filling the air around him with an atomized explosion of down stuffing. The bullet passed under Gurney in the direction of the wall where he’d been sitting, shattering the table lamp that had provided the room’s sole illumination. In the darkness he could hear Nardo breathing hard through clenched teeth. The old woman started to make a faint wailing sound, a sound with a quavering pitch, a sound like a half-remembered lullaby. Then there was the sound of a terrific impact, and the heavy metal door of the room flew open, swung around, and hit the wall- followed immediately by the huge hurtling figure of a man and a smaller figure behind him.
“Freeze!” shouted the giant.
Chapter 52
The cavalry had finally arrived-a little late, but that was a good thing. Considering Dermott’s history of precise marksmanship and his eagerness to pile up the crows, it was possible that not only the cavalry but Nardo and Gurney would have ended up with bullets in their throats. And then, when the gunshots brought the whole department swarming into the house and Dermott opened the valve, sending the pressurized chlorine and ammonia through the sprinkler system…
As it was, the only major casualty other than the lamp and the doorframe was Dermott himself. The bottle, propelled by all of Nardo’s combative rage, had struck him with sufficient force to produce what looked like a possible coma. In a related minor injury, a curved shard of glass had splintered from the bottle on impact, embedding itself in Gurney’s head at the hairline.
“We heard a shot. What the fuck’s going on here?” snarled the hulking man, peering around the mostly dark room.
“Everything’s under control, Tommy,” said Nardo, his jagged voice suggesting he wasn’t yet part of the everything. In the dim light coming in from the other part of the basement, Gurney recognized the smaller officer who’d rushed in on Big Tommy’s heels as the crew-cut Pat with the acetylene-blue eyes. Holding a heavy nine- millimeter pistol at the ready and keeping a close watch on the ugly scene in the bed, she edged around to the far corner of the room and switched on the lamp that stood next to the wing chair where the old woman had been sitting.
“You mind if I get up?” said Gurney, who was still lying across the goose on Dermott’s lap.
Big Tommy glanced at Nardo.
“Sure,” said Nardo, his teeth still partly clenched. “Let him get up.”
As he rose carefully from the bed, blood began flowing freely down his face-the sight of which was probably what restrained Nardo from immediately assaulting the man who had minutes earlier encouraged a demented serial killer to shoot him.
