Moonlight Falls (26 page)

There was a fifty gallon drum filled with old motor oil only a few feet away from me, on my left-hand side. I side stepped over to it, tossed in the old man’s revolver.

Just for the sheer intuition of it, I made the larger cop take off his Kevlar vest, hand it over.

“You planning on being shot?” he asked, as if it were the time for jokes.

I said, “If you don’t fucking mind.”

He pulled it over his head, heaved it my way.

I told them all to go flat onto their bellies.

They didn’t argue.

Pulling the cuffs from the belts, I handed them to the old man.

“Lock them up,” I said. “You lock yourself to the big one.”

The old man moved painfully slow. Or maybe it was my imagination. But in the end, he got the job done.

When they were secured, I pulled off my t-shirt, strapped on the vest. Did it while holding the piece on all three of them. Then I pulled the t-shirt back over the Kevlar. You never knew when a bulletproof vest might come in handy. Especially when the entire State of New York had a gun pointed at your head.

The sirens were so loud now they made my brain hurt.

It seemed everything made my brain hurt.

Making my way to the open door, I stuck my head out, surveyed south, then north.

All clear.

I stepped out into the night.

59

CAIN GOT UP FROM his chair, moved across the floor of what, up until a few days prior, had been the office of his department superior. He closed the door and the Venetian blinds that covered the glass. Then, against department regulations, locked it.

Back at his desk, he pulled a bottle of Seagrams 7 from the bottom right-hand drawer, set it out on his desk. Pouring a shot into a clear drinking glass he pulled back a quick shot, stifling the throat burning urge to choke. Lighting a cigarette, he poured another shot, but this time allowed it to sit out on the desk and breathe.

That’s when his intercom buzzed.

Picking up the extension, he pressed it to his ear.

“Sorry to bother you, Lieutenant Cain,” the switchboard operator said. “But there’s a guy on line one with a funny voice. Says his name is Joseph. That you guys are old friends.”

Cain let out a smoke-filled sigh.

“You want me to get rid of him for you, Lieutenant?”

“No, Emily, I’ll take it.”

Reaching out with his right hand, cigarette set between tar-stained fingers, Cain ambivalently punched the number “1” on the panel.

“Cain,” he groused.

“If this man you call Divine should get away and start shooting off his focking mouth, you will have much trouble, yes?”

The lieutenant, soon to be acting Captain of the S.P.D., found himself swallowing something that felt like a brick.

“I understand,” he said, pouring yet another shot. “I have good men on the job of re-apprehending Divine right now. He won’t get far, Joseph. I assure you.”

“Or perhaps I should now take the matters into my own hands. Do a little housecleaning, as they say in America. Start at the bottom, work my way to the top, yes.”

“That’s not necessary, Joseph.”

“Oh, but I think that a message must be sent. I’d like to personally send a message, to you, yes?”

“That won’t be necessary. I have men and a helicopter searching—“

But the line disconnected. Cain lifted the glass, downed the shot, slapped the glass back down onto the desk. Pressing the intercom, he leaned forward, mouth poised before the hands-free mic.

“Emily,” he called out.

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“Get me Joy, please. Send him directly up to my new office A.S.A.P.”

A dead air pause.

“What is it, Emily? What is it you’re hiding?”

“It’s just that Nicky has been A.W.O.L. since Divine’s prelim hearing and the escape that followed it …”

“And why is it that I—the new commander of this precinct—have not been informed of this development?”

“We were sure he’d be back in no time. Nicky seems like a good kid, Lieutenant.”

Fucking uniforms always covering for one another. But then, you would have done the same thing once upon a time, Mitch.

“Just do your best to locate him, Emily.”

“Already on it, Lieutenant.”

Where the fuck are you, Joy? Why, of all times, do you decide to disappear now?

Sitting back in Jake’s swivel chair, Cain swung around, stared contemplatively out the window onto the pigeons perched there and the gray river in the distance. Just like his department superior used to do when he was in deep shit.

60

THE CHOPPER PILOT MUST have spotted me exiting the warehouse office.

The Huey must have been following the route of the river when it caught me rounding the corner of the warehouse and out onto the parking lot.

Mounted to the belly of the chopper was a spotlight.

It shone a bright beacon down upon me. Just this big round spotlight that I could not escape. Not out in the open like that. No matter how much I tried to shake it, the circle of light followed my every step as I shot across the lot towards the road that accessed the port from Stormville’s south end.

In my mind’s core, I pictured the gates of the Saint Agnes Cemetery.

With the chopper still hovering overhead, I bolted across an empty Broadway. Coming upon the stone cemetery wall I went over the top, dropped down onto the other side. I hid myself in a thick bed of overgrown weeds and brush.

The rain started coming down harder than it had all night.

Lightning flashed over the mountains to the east. The thunder followed just a few seconds later.

The police sirens went silent.

Down on my belly, curled up against a marble mausoleum, I waited for the chopper to make another pass with its bright beacon. Then I got back up on my feet, made one more run for the wooded glade that bordered the west side of the cemetery.

Once inside the protection of the thick cover I dove flat onto my belly.

I was soaking wet again, but I didn’t have the time to care. All I wanted to do was catch my breath, wait for the chopper to disappear. Only then would I think about my next life saving move.

- - -

Maybe a half hour later, I was moving on through the woods, climbing over more chain link and wood fences than I cared to count. It took about forty-minutes more than it should have, but I managed to make it back into the city’s south end in one piece, without being sighted.

I was cold, wet and hungry.

I estimated the time to be close to nine o’clock.

Keeping inside the shadows, I kept a steady pace down Green Street, past Saint Joseph’s church, past the old row houses, brownstones and town houses where the nineteenth century lumber barons and steel mill owners once lived before Stormville became a prison town. From there I moved on through the rain along Broadway, past the old Greyhound station and on past the brightly lit, aluminum-paneled Catskill Civic Center.

Soon I was climbing the desolate back side of the State Street hill in the pouring down rain, cutting through the now abandoned parking garage and out to what had once been considered the rear garden entrance to the Hotel Wellington. A forgotten garden from a forgotten era that had evolved into a jungle of thick weeds, heavy vines, scattered bits of trash and shattered concrete.

I made my way into the alley and waited there under a concealing curtain of darkness and rain for as long as it took. Until I was certain that no black and whites were prowling the State Street side of the hotel. It was then that I slipped out of the alley and approached the now boarded up front entrance to the once majestic Wellington.

Grabbing hold of the plywood that covered the old revolving door frame, I ripped one side away, allowed myself just enough room to slip inside. I wiped the water from my face and eyes, combed back my hair with open fingers. I pulled one of the 9 mms from my pant waist and took a quick look around at what remained of the old lobby. A circle of light that leaked in from the street lamps shined down upon an old reception counter. A long, rectangular-shaped cabinet finished at one time with what I guessed must have been cherry wood panels. Or maybe mahogany.

The panels had been pulled away exposing only a rough wood skeleton.

I took a few steps forward, tickling the trigger guard with my shooting finger as I made my way through the rest of the lobby, my feet shuffling over soot-covered black and white marbled tiles.

I came to a large center stairwell.

Inside the stairwell was an old Otis elevator that made the vertical run up the entire twenty stories of the hotel all the way to the ceiling-mounted skylights. The elevator carriage had an accordion-like door that opened and closed manually. Most of the machine’s guts had been ripped out.

From the bottom of the wrap-around staircase I looked up at the electric light that leaked in through the skylights and shined down upon the naked stair treads like dull yellow tracer beams.

I climbed the stairs.

There was the cracking of the treads, the wormy smell of wet dirt and the rain that seeped through the roof. When I made it to the sixth floor landing, I faced the dark corridor. Pistol gripped in my right hand I walked over empty beer and wine bottles, over down pillows with feather stuffing oozing out gray-brown and clumpy through long gashes torn into the cases. I stepped around piles of papers, over mattresses, discarded clothing and ripped-up sections of carpeting.

Midway along the corridor, my eyes running over the numbers tacked to the wood doors, I heard a rustling sound. Looking down at my feet I saw a rat sneaking its greasy black head out from under a pile of crumpled-up newspaper. I jumped back when the cat-sized rodent scurried over the tops of my boots.

I moved faster then, reaching out and grabbing hold of the occasional brass doorknob along the way, turning each one, surprised to find them all locked.

Then I found Room 657.

Like all the others, it too was locked.

Taking two steps back I raised my right leg and kicked the door in. Both hands grasping the pistol, I stepped into the open doorway. I waved the barrel from one side of the dark room to the other—crouched, taking short rapid breaths not caring about the smell, feeling the hot blood rushing in and out of my brain.

“Joy,” I called out, surprised at the sound of my own voice. “Nick Joy.”

The room was thick with sweat and darkness.

I couldn’t see the pistol in front of my face.

Nothing other than the outline of the city lights that shined in through the square-shaped window behind the thin shade that covered it.

I became convinced then that Joy wasn’t coming. That he’d lied to me; that this whole thing was some kind of bizarre setup.

But then a flashlight popped on.

My throat closed in on itself, mouth dry.

I recognized Joy’s puffy scarlet face in the severe white light. I could tell by his wet, wide-open eyes and shaking lips that he was just as afraid of me. Maybe more so.

I held a bead on his face, in the very spot where he was shining the flashlight. But he didn’t seem to care.

He was crying.

The tears told me that Joy was
definitely
more afraid than me.

I said, “What is this?”

But before he could answer, the bathroom door opened and out stepped a pale face.

61

THE WOOD DOOR OPENED and the Albino man showed himself.

This little grin was forming on his face. The grin grew wider as he raised a sawed-off shotgun to chest height, fired at Joy’s head, pointblank.

The whole thing could not have taken more than a half-second from start to finish, so that Joy’s body had not even hit the floor before the man turned the weapon on me, pumped a second round into the chamber, pulled the trigger.

What can I say?

That there was a blinding explosion and a screaming pain in my chest?

What I can describe for you is the quick flash of white light, like a lightning burst, and then the force of the blast against my chest and the driving nail feeling of all that buckshot and the back of my head bouncing off the wall. But then there was the soothing warmth of the blood that began to soak my left arm as I gradually slid down onto the floor.

That’s when the .22 cal. bullet fragment suddenly shifted inside my brain.

I started to drift.

All pain disappeared.

I just sat there on the rancid floor, felt my body drifting farther and farther into black space. I went away from this bright light as it got smaller and smaller, reduced to the size of a pinhead. Until even that disappeared and everything all around me went very dark and very alone.

Then came the cold.

I felt so cold and alone, knowing there was nothing I could possibly do about it. In the darkness I tried lifting my arms and legs, but they would not budge. I was a dangling man, paralyzed and cold. Naked, left out in the deep freeze.

My body began to fall, fast and faster through the pitch darkness.

But just before I hit bottom, the warmth returned to my body along with the pain in my head.

I opened my eyes …

…
and I was awake.

White streetlight poured in through the yellowed window shades in the bathroom to my right. The light reflected off what was left of the mirror that was attached to the wall-mounted medicine cabinet above the old porcelain sink.

It also reflected the man’s white face as he pulled the fighting knife from a sheath attached to his ankle, extended it to my neck at the precise moment I raised the 9 mm with my good hand, jammed it against his head.