Monkey in the Middle (22 page)

‘Do you see my problem?' Carter asks.

‘Yeah.'

‘Say it, Lieutenant Epstein. Say it out loud.'

Epstein tries to stop himself, but the words slip out anyway. ‘Billy Boyle.'

‘Is that what you call him? Billy Boyle?'

‘Mostly.'

‘Well, it's perfectly clear that if I let Billy Boyle go, he'll be planning his revenge before he starts his car. That's because he's not like you. He's not the dog who jumped in the pool. Billy Boyle's been swimming in that pool for ever. The water is all he knows.'

Epstein finally tears his eyes away from Billy's. He glances at Paulie, who's staring back at him as if he was a rat in a maze. Epstein agrees with Carter's bit about the dog in the pool, especially with how it applies to himself. Not for a minute does he deny that he's about to sink. No, no, no. Epstein's difficulty is with the price of his rescue.

‘So Billy Boyle has to die,' Carter persists. ‘Do we agree on that? Billy Boyle has to die and Lieutenant Epstein has to kill him.'

Epstein's head jerks up as Carter gets to his feet and crosses the room. He watches Carter open the center drawer of a small desk and remove a semi-automatic handgun, a compact .22 with a silencer screwed into the barrel. As Epstein knows well, the .22 is an assassin's weapon. Fired into a man's skull, its rounds break into small fragments that ricochet through the brain without creating a messy exit wound. Early in his career, while still on patrol, Epstein had been first to arrive at the scene of a homicide. The entrance wound in the victim's scalp was so small that he initially suspected a heart attack.

‘At another time,' Carter says, ‘I'd just disappear. Trust me, I'm good at disappearing. But the way things are, I have to stick around. I have to stick around and I can't be watching my back every minute.'

Carter walks up behind Epstein. He lays the .22 on the couch and steps away, lifting the muzzle of his shotgun. Without being asked, Paulie takes up a position six feet to Carter's left.

‘You'll have to jack a round into the chamber,' Carter says.

Epstein picks up the .22. He yanks the slide back, then hesitates long enough to check the clip. Only when he's sure the magazine is full does he release the slide. The weapon is now ready to fire. And Epstein's ready, too, though he hasn't yet decided on a target. Paulie Margarine is standing to Epstein's left. He's holding Billy Boyle's 9mm semi with the barrel pointed slightly down. Epstein is certain he can turn and fire at least two shots into the gangster's torso before Carter pulls the shotgun's trigger. No matter how well-trained, there's always a gap between the decision to act and the action taken. The gap isn't very large. With practice, it can be brought down to a quarter of a second. Nevertheless, that gap is the major reason why the man who gets off the first punch generally wins the fight.

But not even at the furthest extremes of his imagination can Epstein envision taking out both men. If he turns on Paulie, he's as much as committing suicide. Still, there's a consolation prize in play. Should Carter pulls the trigger on that shotgun, a dozen fingers will be dialing 911 before Epstein hits the carpet. It's Christmas, everyone's home and the building's solid middle-class. This is not a neighborhood where the roar of a shotgun is likely to go unreported.

Epstein finally turns to Billy Boyle, whose bulging eyes appear almost demented. Is he terrified? Or still enraged? Epstein's not sure. But Billy's inner state is irrelevant, because the only certainty is that whatever choice Epstein makes, Billy Boyle will die.

Suddenly, Carter steps forward to lay the shotgun's barrel against the back of Epstein's head. ‘Can't have you shooting Paulie, can I? Now that I've grown fond of him.'

‘You read minds?' Epstein asks.

‘No, I calculate probabilities and act on them.'

And there it is, out in the open. Epstein did calculate the probabilities after his first meeting with Carter. And not just once, either. If he'd acted on them, he'd be home with Sofia.

‘What you gotta think about is this,' Paulie Margarine adds. ‘You got a wife and a kid on the way. What happens to them if your body is never found, if you vanish without a fuckin' trace? Your old lady might not even collect your pension, fa Christ's sake.'

Epstein ignores the gangster. Paulie's definitely not running the show. ‘You were wrong about the pool, the one with the dog,' he tells Carter.

‘How so?'

Epstein feels something within his soul begin to revolve, a cauldron, heavy and leaded. He feels the cauldron slowly empty, feels himself slowly fill, and he wonders what happened to his heart. That's because it now seems as remote, theoretical and finally irrelevant as the black holes that dot the universe.

‘There are no steps in that pool,' Epstein explains as he pushes the barrel of the .22 into Billy Boyle's ear. ‘There are no steps and no rescue. In that pool, you swim or you drown.'

Twenty-Seven

E
verything old is new again.
The words reverberate through Epstein's mind when he finally steps on to the sidewalk. I'm an alien from another galaxy, he tells himself. I've never breathed this air before, never heard the steady hum of a passing airplane, or marked the sharp line of a rooftop against the night sky, or faced into an unrelenting winter wind.
Everything old is new again.

But not for Billy Boyle. In a few hours, Billy Boyle's remains (along with Montgomery Thorpe's head and hands) will begin a slow voyage aboard a garbage scow. This voyage won't end, according to Paulie Margarine, until Billy's remains are a hundred miles from land, until he rests on the ocean floor beneath two miles of water.

The night has become strikingly cold, the air even more dry and clear. Small clouds scud across the heavens, from north to south. At another time, before he was dropped into this new world, Epstein might have compared them to an armada on the move. But not tonight. Tonight he's thinking the clouds are lemmings in search of a cliff.

Epstein chuckles. Imagine their disappointment, he tells himself, when they discover the Earth is round.

An SUV passes, a Jeep, and Epstein stares at the driver as if at a mirage. The man is elderly and alone. Though he drives with both hands on the wheel, the Jeep weaves slightly, to the left and to the right. Too much Christmas cheer. Though Epstein doesn't know why, he waits until the car turns at the end of the block before setting out for a bus stop on Woodhaven Boulevard. Epstein's on foot because Billy Boyle's Chrysler 300 is also destined for a sea voyage. Within a few days, the Chrysler will be in the hold of a ship sailing under the Panamanian flag. Three days after that, in Guatemala, the car will be unloaded and its identifying numbers removed prior to sale. Again, according to Paulie Margarine, whose eye for the bottom line Solly Epstein finds unnerving.

Epstein catches a bit of luck on Woodhaven Boulevard when a gypsy cab happens by. The cab is piloted by a black man whose thickened English betrays his African origins. He asks no questions when Epstein directs him to a waterfront promenade that runs along the harbor near the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano Bridge.

The drive takes only a half-hour and Epstein's content to stare out the window. Queens and Brooklyn are entirely prosaic on their southern ends. Squat apartment buildings, six and eight stories high, one- and two-family homes, store-front businesses with their shutters drawn, the occasional open gas station closer to the airport. Epstein finds the monotony comforting. He knows he's in need of grounding, and this is very familiar ground to Epstein, who spent most of his childhood in nearby Sheepshead Bay.

Epstein slides a fifty dollar bill out of his pocket when the driver finally halts the cab inside a small parking lot. He tears the bill in half and gives one of the halves to the driver.

‘I'll be gone about thirty minutes,' he explains.

‘You sure die your death of cold,' the driver tells him.

Epstein smiles the first smile of his new life. Africans hate the cold even more than Latinos. You see it in their faces on the first cool days of autumn, a profound misery that won't be dispelled until the following June.

‘Don't worry,' Epstein tells the man. ‘I was an Eskimo in a past life.'

The driver shakes his head. He hands Epstein a wool cap. ‘Put this on your head, mon. Don't play the fool.'

Outside, Epstein pulls the hat down over his head and ears, then slides his hands into his pockets. He's standing underneath the Verrazano Bridge, staring out between the massive towers at the bridge's deck, a narrowing ribbon of black running almost to a point at the far end. Epstein's home is less than a mile away and he's been here many times, occasionally with Sofia, but more often alone. This is where he comes when he needs to think.

Shoulders hunched, Epstein trudges ahead, absorbing the smell and the taste of the sea with every breath. He listens to the waves slap against the sea wall and to the predatory howl of a police siren that somehow penetrates the steady hiss of the wind. In the distance, a chopper crosses the bay, headed for Newark Airport, looking to Epstein like a firefly on a summer's night.

The sounds and smells ease the turmoil. Epstein's not seeking absolution. His problem is much simpler. The urge to unburden himself is threatening to overwhelm him. He has to deal with it before he does something really stupid, like confess to Sofia.

Epstein walks a quarter of a mile, to a bend in the promenade where the entire harbor opens up. His eyes seek the familiar landmarks: Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, the skeletal cranes on the docks of Bayonne, sleepy Staten Island across the bay. To his left, the cables of the bridge trail from slender towers that rise to form arches at the top. Epstein has always considered the Verrazano to be the most graceful of the city's many bridges. From the beginning, he was drawn to the span's isolation. The East River bridges that link Manhattan to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx succeed each other like the chains of necklace. The Verrazano guards them all.

Turning his head away from the wind, Epstein takes a step, then stops abruptly as a thought flips into his consciousness, agile as a gymnast. If the bosses decide against releasing the Macy's Killer sketch, Solly Epstein will just have to leak it to a reporter he knows. The important thing here is to deflect the investigation.

Epstein pounces on the thought. Yes, Virginia, he tells himself, there is a future. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight.

Other considerations follow. Epstein finds them consoling, if not particularly pleasant. The Macy's Killer will not be apprehended and Billy Boyle will vanish under suspicious circumstances. Solly Epstein won't be around when Billy's disappearance comes to light because tomorrow morning, citing his wife's difficult pregnancy, he intends to take a leave of absence. A prevailing belief that Epstein knows more than he's telling will inevitably develop, Solly Epstein and Billy Boyle having been all but joined at the hip.

Epstein chuckles. Suspect in a probable homicide? Not good for the old career. But there is one consolation. The next time he meets Paulie Margarine, Paulie's gonna think, If this cop whacked his best buddy, he surely won't hesitate to kill me. And Paulie Margarine will be right, too. Maybe Leonard Carter's too much for Solly Epstein. Not so Paulie.

Ahead of him, Epstein watches a tugboat punch its way through the whitecaps. He's thinking it's about time to go. His face and hands are numb and the cold is eating into his chest. But then the cell phone in his pocket begins to vibrate and he feels a momentary surge of panic. He reaches for the phone, nonetheless, and manages to fumble it open. The call is from Sofia, from his own home just a few blocks away.

‘Hey, baby,' Epstein says.

‘Have you got a cold? You sound hoarse?'

‘No, I'm OK. I'll be home in a half-hour.'

‘That's where you're wrong,
mi Corazon
. Meet me at the hospital. Our son is on his way.'

Epstein fills his lungs with air cold enough to hurt. Again, the words tear through his mind:
everything old is new again
.

Epstein fills his lungs with air cold enough to hurt. Again, the words tear through his mind:
everything old is new again
.

Epstein fills his lungs with air cold enough to hurt. Again, the words tear through his mind:
everything old is new again
.