“I wish I had the time to explain the irony of what you just said, but I don’t. It’s not about that. Please, just do it.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Someone with a carry permit who can handle himself, but someone who won’t stick out in a crowd. He’s meant to be insurance, not a deterrent. I don’t want Amy or anyone else to know he’s there.”
There was a pensive silence coming from Meg’s end of the line. Then she gave voice to her worries, “Are these those gun nuts from-”
“Yeah.”
“What’s going on? Is Amy really in danger?”
“I’m not taking any chances.”
“Why not call the NYPD?”
“No cops, Meg! No cops.”
“All right. Don’t bite my head off. You realize this kind of thing can get very expensive.”
“Do it, Donovan. Just do it, please?”
“Okay.”
I didn’t give her time to ask more questions I wasn’t going to answer anyway, so I clicked off. Within two hours of my call to Meg, I received a call from Tom McDonald, a retired NYPD detective who ran a private security firm. He explained that when they were on the NYPD, he and his team had helped safeguard everyone from the mayor of New York to the president of the United States and that they were expert at blending into the background if that was what the client required. That was exactly what I required. I gave him accurate descriptions of Jim and Renee, and Jim’s truck. I gave him all I thought I knew about them. He said he already had all the information on Amy he needed to begin and promised that he and his relief, another retired detective, would give me regular phone updates.
He asked one last question. “You wanna tell me anything that maybe you didn’t mention before?”
“They’re both experts with guns.”
“Hitting paper targets don’t make you an expert.”
“I’m not talking about paper targets, Mr. McDonald.”
“Ex-military, huh?” he asked, his voice suddenly more serious.
“Something like that,” I said.
“Good thing you told me, but don’t worry about it. My partner, Tony Dee and me, we got her back. Nothing’s gonna happen to your ex-wife on our watch.”
“She can’t know you’re there.”
“We know. Believe me, we’ll fade so far into the background, no one’ll know we’re there unless they have to.”
In spite of McDonald’s reassurances and regular updates, I didn’t sleep much that night or the following night. It was far more unnerving not knowing how much, if any, of what Jim had said was reality based. Not knowing made it really difficult to determine what else I could do to protect Amy; but even if I could have been one hundred percent sure of Amy’s safety, I had plenty to keep my nights sleepless. There was no avoiding the truth of Jim’s narrative even if he had nothing to do with most of it. Frank Vuchovich and Haskell Brown’s deaths were facts. My rebirth as a writer and as a man had come at the price of blood, a lot of blood, and, so far, none of it mine.
It was all pretty exhausting and I got to the point where not sleeping was no longer an option. I could feel my body shutting down, but stubbornly hanging on to wakefulness. I just needed something to dull the edge of my own mania. There was nothing in my apartment to drink. I considered going downstairs and paying a visit to Isaac’s daughter. For me, nothing took the edge off quite like fucking, but the Kipster was still dead and using a woman that way was his MO, not mine. Then I remembered the painkillers the ER doctor had prescribed for my broken ribs. I snapped one of the two remaining pills in half and swallowed it dry. I don’t know when the sun was supposed to set on the rest of the world, but it set on me pretty damned quickly.
Forty-Seven
I jackknifed up in bed, eyelids snapping open like cartoon window shades, my clothes soaked through with cold sweat. The last time I woke up in a cold sweat, I was in detox. Christ, it was so fucking clear to me in my sleep that I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t seen it before. I had the proof or, hopefully, the disproof of Jim’s version of events right there in the apartment with me.
The clock read 3:02 A.M. when I stepped onto the bare wooden floors and stood, stretching the knots out of my muscles. The room was utterly dark and still, but not quiet. The traffic noise from Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Parkway was like the buzzing of a sleepy hive and with the Avenue H subway station only two blocks away, the
The trance was quickly broken and I found the metal file box where I stored my monthly bills. The beat-up old file box was the only thing of my father’s I’d kept. I could not help but think of Jim, the scars on his back, the Colonel’s handgun collection, and again feel pity for what had become of him. I felt a little sorry for myself too. Sorry that I had been broken for so long, that I had denied to myself that finding my father dead by his own hand had helped ruin me.
I sat at my desk looking through all my recent bills. If what Jim had said was true about driving my Porsche to New York and back, my CompuPass toll bill, which was automatically charged to my AmEx card, would be much higher than usual. In fact, for nearly a year before this last September, I had no toll charges at all. Until the day Frank Vuchovich held my class hostage, where did I have to go, really? But my AmEx statements for the two months prior to my departure from Brixton were nowhere to be found. I had my most recent one, but not the two previous ones. There was nothing particularly surprising in that. I just moved and I was never the neatest of record keepers.
I booted up my laptop. While I may not have been able to check my toll bills, I could look back at the media reports that followed in the wake of Haskell Brown’s murder. When I Googled “Haskell Brown homicide,” I got a boxcar full of hits. But the only thing any of the reports said about the bullet that caused his fatal wound was that it was from a handgun. Another dead end. Then I had an idea, one that even my sloppy record keeping couldn’t thwart. I got my phone and scrolled down to the newest number on my contact list.
“McDonald here.”
“This is Weiler. Everything all right there?” I asked.
“Fine. Quiet. She went out to dinner at nine to Otto’s over on Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street. I can tell you what she ate, if you’re interested.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“She was home at ten fifty-one. Her lights went off at eleven forty-seven and no one’s been in or out of the building since one-thirteen. My relief should be here in about an hour.”
“Very thorough. Thanks.”
“You’re up kinda early, no?”
“Nerves, I guess, and I’m a writer. We work at odd hours sometimes.”
“A writer, huh? Whatchu workin’ on?”
“That’s sort of why I called. I was wondering if you still have any contacts inside the department? I’m doing preliminary research for a book about the murder of a famous book editor. He was beaten, then shot to death. Happened a few months ago in Chelsea. Might’ve been a hate crime.”
“Whatchu need?”
“I’ve read every report on the homicide, but there’s nothing about the caliber of the handgun the killer used.”
“What’s the vic’s name?”
“Haskell Brown.”
