called in their fixer to get TwoTimes out of the way.’
‘Tommy?’
‘Yeah, Tommy. You want coffee? I can make us some coffee.’
‘No. Thanks. Not until I’ve heard it all.’
McCabe sighed. ‘Problem was Tommy had gotten greedy. He doesn’t want to take TwoTimes out ’cause he figures he’ll lose a nice source of income. So instead he decides to talk him out of it. Tommy always figured he could talk anybody out of anything. Anyway, he goes over to TwoTimes’s place, a sleazebag apartment on Merced Street, and tells him he’s gotta stop crowding the big guys. TwoTimes says, “What the fuck you talking about? You work for me.” So Tommy tells TwoTimes he also works for a number of other clients, and if TwoTimes doesn’t stop horning in on their business, he’s gonna have to arrest him.’
‘Tommy is?’
‘Yeah, but TwoTimes is too smart for that. He knows no way in hell is Tommy gonna arrest anybody who can testify in court how he’s been paying him off for more than two years. Instead he figures Tommy’s gonna kill him. So while Tommy’s still talking, TwoTimes takes out this bullshit little twenty-two and puts two slugs into his head. Kills him on the spot.’
‘How did you find out about all this?’
‘Some of it at the trial. Some from Tommy’s partner. The rest I got from TwoTimes just before I took him down.’
‘So what happened after he killed Tommy?’
‘Biggest bullshit trial I ever saw in my life. I mean, the DA had TwoTimes dead to rights. They had Tommy’s blood all over the apartment. They had the gun — ’
‘Fingerprints?’
‘Not on the gun. He wiped it clean.’ McCabe paused. ‘Get dressed,’ he said. ‘Let’s take a walk. I need some air.’
‘You’ll tell me the rest of it?’
‘Yeah, I’ll tell you the rest of it.’
It took McCabe less than a minute to throw on a pair of jeans and an oversized sweatshirt loose enough to cover his. 45. While Kyra dressed, he interrupted Casey’s ongoing snooze to let her know it was time to get out of bed and ready for school. Breakfast was Cheerios. They were going out. They’d be back, but not before she left.
Kyra and McCabe walked across the Eastern Prom and down the hill toward the morning light and the water. They crossed the narrow-gauge tracks and then turned north along the joggers’ trail toward Back Bay. A few runners passed. Other than that they were alone. ‘I didn’t want to talk about this stuff in the apartment. Casey can hear through walls. She’s got ears like a hawk. None of this is for her consumption.’
‘It’s eyes like a hawk. To my knowledge hawks aren’t particularly well regarded for their hearing.’
‘Yeah, I know. I just couldn’t come up with an appropriate animal metaphor. How about ears like a rabbit?’ He smiled.
Kyra didn’t return his smile. She wasn’t falling for banter. ‘Let’s stay on subject,’ she said.
‘You’re right. Where was I?’
‘The biggest bullshit trial you ever saw in your life.’
‘Yeah, right. TwoTimes’s lawyer puts him on the stand, and he comes in with this bullshit alibi that he was having sex with his girlfriend while Tommy was getting shot, and both the girlfriend and the girlfriend’s mother swear up and down that it’s true.’
‘He gets off on that?’
‘He gets off on reasonable doubt. Nobody denied Tommy was killed in TwoTimes’s apartment or that he was killed with TwoTimes’s gun, but there were no witnesses. Even though this twelve-year-old girl who lived down the hall told detectives she heard the four shots and then saw TwoTimes exiting the apartment via the fire escape. Unfortunately, she wasn’t willing to repeat the story in court. One of TwoTimes’s crack crew probably got to her.’
‘So he gets off, and you, to your everlasting regret, go to his apartment and kill him, what, out of revenge for your dead brother?’
‘That’s what the Internal Affairs people were trying to prove, but that wasn’t how it happened. By the way, I don’t really regret it.’
‘So how did it happen?’
‘The problem, as IA saw it, was that I was Midtown North homicide and not South Bronx narcotics. I had no business nosing around in the case, especially after TwoTimes walked.’
‘But you did?’
‘But I did.’
‘May I ask why, and what you were hoping to accomplish? Assuming, of course, you’re telling the truth about not going there to kill the guy.’
‘I could have done that. I was certainly tempted, but I didn’t. I knew he couldn’t be tried for the murder again, but I wanted him to admit not only that he killed Tommy but that he was a dealer. That he sold crack to kids for a living. I went wearing a wire. I wanted the truth. I wanted him to do at least a little time.’ McCabe paused. ‘Maybe I wanted to rough him up a little.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I go upstairs in this shithole where he hangs out, and I find him in the apartment. He takes me for a cop right off, which is not too hard, but he doesn’t know I’m Tommy’s brother. I ask him about it, and he tells me what happened. How he’d wasted this narc and walked. He knew he couldn’t be tried again. He’s laughing his ass off. So I figure fuck it and I tell him who I am. That gets to him right away. I mean, if a dude as black as TwoTimes can turn white, he did. Right away he goes for his piece. He clears his waistband and fires, but the shot goes wide, into the wall. I’m more accurate. My bullet puts a hole in his head. That was the end of it. The whole story.’
‘There was an investigation?’
‘Of course. There always is.’
‘And you were exonerated?’
‘I was exonerated. The bad guy had a weapon, and he fired first. You could hear the two shots clearly on the recorder. First the little plink of his. 22 and right after it the louder boom of the 9 mm. Under the circumstances, I used appropriate force. Unfortunately, there was enough lingering doubt about why I was there in the first place to kill my prospects as a detective in New York. It’s part of the reason I took the job up here. Part of the reason I met you.’
‘Casey being the other part?’
‘Yeah.’
They walked for a while, neither saying anything. Eventually Kyra asked, ‘Would you have killed him anyway? Even if he hadn’t pulled a gun?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I certainly wanted to, but he wasn’t too long for this world anyway. He was an arrogant little prick, and there were at least a half dozen bigger sharks out for his ass. They would have gotten him sooner or later.’
‘You said you have no regrets about killing him?’
‘No regrets. He was vermin and he deserved to die.’
‘So why are you having nightmares about it?’
‘I guess because he’s the only man I ever killed. Because it was up close and personal. Because it was so fast. He was alive. Then he was dead. Just like that. In spite of what you see on TV, killing people isn’t all that easy.’
Kyra stopped and looked up. ‘That helps.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Helps me be sure that if I do marry you, my husband won’t be somebody who can do something like that easily.’
‘That’s important, huh?’
‘I won’t dignify that with a response.’
‘No, if you marry me you won’t be marrying a murderer. You’ll be marrying a cop. A cop who’s a refugee from
