Allegiance (Joe Logan Book 4) (3 page)

For the first time in a very long time, something had happened that put Logan off eating.  He didn’t have much else to say to Hoagy.  Just got up, nodded his head and left the diner.

The
morning after the incident at what was locally known as Dutchman’s Pier, Max Dalton was at a private clinic that was situated on the upper east side of Central Park, only two blocks from the towering building where his boss, Patrick Fallon, lived in a six-bedroom apartment, in what where now commonly called Mansions in the Sky.

“You’re one lucky son of a bitch, Jack,” Max said as he pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed.  “You caught three slugs and you’re still breathing.  How’re you feeling?”

“Cut to the chase,” Jack said a little breathlessly.  One of the shots had scraped a lung.  “You didn’t call in to chitchat or bring me flowers.”

“No reason not to be civilized.  The boss wants details of the fuckup at the pier.”

“The cop shot Milo.  I had him pinned in the car and he tossed his gun out.  He climbed out with his hands behind his head.  He told me that he had a flash drive that he would hand over to the DA, but he was bluffing. And the bastard had a backup piece in his hand.  He got three off before I took him out.  I searched him, then the car, but there was nothing.”

“You
didn’t
take him out, Jack.  He’s alive and in Bellevue, just a stone’s throw from here.  The only upside is that he’s in a coma.  You should have double-tapped him.”

“He looked dead to me.  I’d just been shot and needed to get the hell away from there before I bled out.”

“What about the other guy, Benny Cole?”

“He jumped in the river.  I guess he drowned.”

“You do too much guessing.  Maybe he didn’t, and the cop could make it.”

“Newman hasn’t got enough to cause us any grief.”

“Maybe, and maybe not.  I sent two guys go over to his house.  His wife was out.  They tore the place apart but found nothing.  They took his computer.  Maybe what we want is in it.”

“So why exactly are you here?”

“I thought that you would’ve got more from Newman.  Obviously you didn’t.”

“I didn’t get chance to.”

“No sweat.  If he didn’t put anything in his computer, then whatever he thought he knew is in his head.  And the first chance we get he’s history.  Mr. Fallon doesn’t want him to come out of the coma.”

“So you’re going to have him whacked in Bellevue?”

“Yeah, and his wife, in case he talked shop with her.  And we need to find Benny Cole.  He saw what happened.”

“What about me?” Jack said.  “Am I on Mr. Fallon’s shit list?”

Max smiled.  “You’re fine.  He was pissed over the way it went down, but he knows that you’re loyal.  If he thought otherwise you’d be in the morgue, not a private room with a view and all mod-cons.”

Logan thought about what to do next.  Decided to call and see Margie Newman. Arnie would make it or he wouldn’t, but would be under armed protection at the hospital 24/7.  He knew that Margie would be distraught over Arnie.  They had always been as close as two peas in a pod.  It was more than a marriage; they had been each other’s best friend. 
Still were
, he thought, dismissing the lapse into past tense, as if his ex-partner was already dead and buried.

It was eleven a.m. when Logan entered the front yard of the house in Tuckahoe, stepped up onto the raised porch and thumbed the doorbell.  There was no answer, so he rapped on the wood frame of the door.

“There’s nobody home,” a familiar voice said from the yard next door.  “And you’re a sight for sore eyes, Joe.”

Logan turned to face the brunette at the other side of a four-foot high wood panel fence that separated the two properties.

“Hi, Della,” Logan said to the forty-something widow who he knew was a close friend of Margie’s. “What can you tell me?”

“Come round, I’ll make some fresh coffee,” Della said before going back inside before he could accept or refuse.

They sat at a table in the large diner kitchen.  It was flooded by weak October sunlight, and Logan savored the smell of the coffee and fresh bread that Della had baked that morning.

“It was,
is
terrible,” Della said. “Arnie got shot, and a couple hours after Margie had left for the hospital in a police car, some guys broke into the house.”

“Did you see them?”

“Not clearly enough to identify.  It was dark.  I heard noises and thought that Margie had come back, so I phoned, but it just rang.  And then I went out in the backyard and could see the odd flash of light from inside.  Guessed that it was a burglary in progress so went back in and called the police.  From upstairs I saw two figures leave the house and get into a dark SUV in the alley. They’d been gone a few minutes before the police arrived.  I called Margie on her cell and told her what was happening, and she came home, packed some things and left.”

“Where did she go, Della?”

“She asked me not to tell anyone. I—”

“I’m not anyone.  You know who I am.  I was Arnie’s partner for years, and Margie is probably in danger, and knows it.  If whoever had Arnie shot finds out where she is, he’ll ask questions that I doubt she could answer.  And even if she could, she would be murdered.”

“How do you know that?” Della said, getting up and going over to a counter and fumbling a cigarette out of a pack, to light it but stay where she was, just waiting for Logan to answer her.

He took another sip of the coffee.  “My take on it is that Arnie was lured out to the pier to meet whoever shot him.  He knows something, and must have something that someone wants.  The B and E ‒ breaking and entering ‒ was to find whatever he has, which is probably incriminating evidence.”

Della knew that Logan had been close to the couple.  She trusted him, but had a niggling doubt. It seemed a big coincidence that he had turned up on the doorstep now after being in the wind for so long.  “I’m not sure what to do,” she said after stubbing the cigarette end out in a ceramic ashtray purloined five years ago from a Marriott hotel in Orlando.

“I’ll pour more coffee,” Logan said.  “You phone Margie and let me speak to her, and we’ll take it from there.  Okay?”

Della nodded, phoned Margie and told her that Joe was with her.  Asked for an update on Arnie, but there was no change in his condition.

“Hi, Logan,” Margie said when Della handed him the phone.  “What brings you back to the city?”

“I phoned Arnie from Arizona a while back.  He looked something up for me and told me to drop by if I made it back here.  I decided to head this way, and here I am.  How is he?”

“Still in a coma.  They’ve done tests and say that there’s still brain activity.  I’m counting on him pulling through.”

“If he can he will, Margie.  He’s as tough as leather. But
you
need to stay away from the hospital.  Someone out there wanted Arnie dead, thought that he was, and then searched your house for whatever they think he has.  It’s my guess that they’ll target you now.”

“Why me?” Margie said.  “He didn’t talk about the job.  I don’t know anything.”

“They don’t know that.  I need to enter your house and search it, and then pick you up from wherever you are and find a safe place for you to stay.”

“Who’re
they
, Logan?”

“I don’t know, yet.  But I’ll find out and make it right.”

Margie gave him the address of her brother and his wife, where she was staying with them in Melrose, close to the Yankee Stadium in South Bronx, and told him to be careful, and to put Della back on.  She knew from past times that Logan was someone that got the job done, whatever it was.  She doubted that being a civilian had changed him.  He had been what Arnie said was ‘an all-round solid guy’.

Margie and Della spoke for another minute, and then ended the call.

“Margie says to give you the spare house key that I’ve got,” Della said.  “Is there anything that I can do to help?”

Logan shook his head when Della got the key from a drawer in one of the wall-mounted kitchen cupboards and handed it to him.  “No,” he said.  “Just keep a low profile, and if anyone calls by, don’t mention me.”

“Okay.  Will you be staying in the city?”

“No.  This was just going to be a visit for a couple of days.  When I know that Arnie and Margie are safe I’ll be moving on.”

“Where to?”

He hiked his shoulders.  “I never know till I arrive.”

“Don’t you ever feel the need to settle down?”

“No.  I guess I try to kid myself that not much matters to me, apart from the sense of freedom I enjoy.  I come and go as I please, just passing through with a rucksack on my back and a clear conscience.  I’m a simple man, best left alone to go my own way.”

“It sounds a lonely existence, Joe.  I didn’t know how bad being alone could be until Ray died.  I think I almost hated him for a while, as if it was his fault that he got cancer and left me at such a young age.”

Logan said nothing.  He had long ago decided that life was like cards being dealt out of a casino shoe: winning and losing hands.  You never knew which you had until you’d played them.  And the house always came out on top in the end.

“I don’t suppose you want to stay here, instead of paying for a hotel?” Della said.

He shook his head.  “Thanks for the offer, but no.  I intend to find out what went down, and deal with whoever is responsible for Arnie being shot. That will probably mean I’ll be in the firing line.  I wouldn’t want you in it with me.”

There was nothing else to say.  Della hugged Logan, and then he left by the kitchen door to let himself into Arnie’s house.

There was black residue from where CSI techs had dusted for prints.  The place was a mess.  Whoever had broken in had not been there to steal, but had been searching for something.  It had to be information that Arnie had, and so it would be on a stick or disk.

Logan went upstairs, reached up and twisted the catch that held the hatch to the loft in place.  Lowered the aluminum ladders, went up and switched on the light, which was a bare bulb hanging on a cable from a beam.  He smiled.  Arnie had always been ultra careful.  Anything that he considered too important to risk being taken was up here, hidden in a large space under the boarded floor.  And as far as Logan knew, he was the only person that knew about it.  He remembered Arnie telling him that if he ever got killed on duty, or even died of natural causes, then there would be items that would need to be disposed of or dealt with.

Taking a small Gerber lock knife from a pocket of his fleece, Logan levered the thick section of chipboard up and leaned it against the bare brick wall behind it.

There were three manila document wallets, an old plastic cassette tape case, a Glock 17 semiautomatic pistol, spare mag and box of ammo in the hidey-hole.  Inside the case were half a dozen flash drives.  He took everything, left the loft as he had found it and went back downstairs.  A large canvas shopping bag was looped by its handles over an ironing board in a corner.  He put the paperwork and case in it, then checked the Glock and tucked it in the back of his pants before leaving the house and going back to Della’s to return the key.

“You found something that will help?” she quizzed.

“I don’t know, yet.  There are files and memory sticks.”

“Do you have a laptop?”

“No.”

“You could use my computer.”

“That would leave a trail.  I’ll buy a cheap laptop, see what I’ve got, then take the hard drive out and destroy it.”

“Can’t be too careful, eh?”

“That’s right.  If Arnie was shot because of something I’ve found, then someone wants it badly enough to kill for it.”

“What will you do, take it to the police?”

Logan shook his head.  “Not till I know what it is.”

“You didn’t come by car,” Della said.  “You’ll need one.  Ray’s old Ford is in the garage.  My brother uses it when his is in the shop, and he’s kept it in good order.  Take it.”

“I’d have to change the plate, and there’s no guarantee that you’d get the car back.”

“I hardly ever drive anywhere, Joe.  I keep meaning to get rid of it.  It’s one of a hundred things that I haven’t got round to doing yet.  I feel like a swimmer out of her depth, treading water, not able to swim against the current.  Does that make sense?”

“What is, is,” Logan said.  “You’ll wake up one morning and be able to make a fresh start.  Life goes on.  The dead don’t give a shit, so to let part of you die with them doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Ray would have wanted you to enjoy your life.”

Logan got another hug, and a damp patch on his fleece from the tears that ran from Della’s eyes.

He climbed in the car and reached under the seat to pull the bar up and push backwards until he was as far from the foot pedals as possible.  He had long legs that car manufacturers didn’t cater for.  Being as sure as he could be that no one was watching, he drove out of the unlit garage and Della pulled the door down.

Leaving the old Taurus on the second floor of a parking garage a block from the hotel, Logan used the stairs down to the street.  He had stopped a couple of times on the way back, once to grab a bite to eat, and then to buy a cheap, refurbished laptop in a store by the name of Almost New.