Nice Place for a Murder (15 page)

“Plane crash. Nearly killed him. Show some sympathy,” I said. “Look, stay up front and watch the shore around the ferry terminal on Shelter. The mate says maybe he saw a boat like Sosenko’s go into Dering Harbor this morning. He could have left his boat there and walked to the ferry slip. All just maybe, mind you.”

“So maybe he’s got himself over to the terminal and is waiting for us to dock,” Wally said.

“Maybe. So look.”

“And you?” he said.

“That truck over there bothers me. I thought I heard somebody moving inside when I walked around the back. There’s nobody up front but the driver. Could be something’s not right.”

Wally went forward. Now the kid with the Toyota was standing at the rail on the port side. Ingo got out of the car and joined Hector at the starboard rail.

I went to the truck. The driver had both windows rolled all the way up, strange in this mild weather. I tapped on his window with my finger, then made a lowering motion with my hand. He gave me a glance, then went right back to staring straight ahead. He was refusing to look at me again, refusing to roll down his window. Now I was edgy. Why was he ignoring me?

I reached inside my jacket to touch my gun, as I pushed my face up close to the window. “Can I talk to you for a minute? Would you roll down your window. It’s important.” My voice was loud enough to attract the attention of the couple in the Buick, who were watching me now.

The driver of the truck turned to me angrily. He glared at me for a moment, then rolled the window down slowly. “You got a problem?” he said.

“No problem. I need some help, that’s all. I have a friend supposed to be on this ferry, in a truck, he said. You’re the only truck here, so I thought maybe he was with you, you know, in the back. Guy named Hick Sosenko. He in there?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I got no time for this,” he said, and started rolling the window up again.

“Just hold on,” I said. “I heard noises in the back of your truck. What have you got back there?”

“What I got back there is none of your goddamn business. Now get the fuck away before I open this door and knock you on your fat ass.”

By now I suspected the worst. I had to get a look inside that truck, so I walked back and pulled open both rear doors. I could hear the driver climbing out of the cab to come after me, so I drew my gun to give him some second thoughts about whatever he had in mind.

Even before I could make out what was inside the truck, I smelled it. A ripe barnyard stink so thick I could almost see it as it came pouring out the open doors. The source of the hideous aroma was a trio of goats, ragged creatures who’d been cooped up in the truck for much too long. The floor was covered with equal parts straw and goat-shit.

The driver appeared, ready for battle, but backed off when he saw my gun. I started to close the doors to his truck, not unhappy to seal off the smell, and the picture of the pathetic animals inside. “Mistake,” I told the driver. “Sorry.”

That’s when it started. “Ben. Ben. Starboard side.” Wally was shouting and waving his hands in the air. “Look starboard, coming up from behind! That’s the boat. It’s him!”

Before I could move, Sosenko’s boat was about to draw alongside, running parallel to the ferry. Ingo and Hector were still at the rail. “Get down!” I shouted. Hector turned to see why I was calling, but Ingo was still looking out across the water, watching the approach of the boat. “It’s Sosenko! Get down!” I screamed at them.

Hector hesitated a second, staring at me, his mouth open, finally grasping what was happening. He reached out to Ingo and pulled him back and to the side, away from the rail., a move that took Ingo out of the line of fire, but left Hector open for an instant.

An instant was all it took. Sosenko raised a rifle out of his boat’s wheelhouse and fired it, a quick shot across twenty feet of water. Hector spun around, slid across the rear  fender of the Mercedes and collapsed on the deck.

The second shot was slow in coming, because Sosenko had to work the rifle’s bolt action, and steer his boat, too. I heard the slug hit the steel plate below the rail.

In the other vehicles, frightened people with no place to run dropped down in their seats. The mother in the SUV got out, opened the rear door, dragged her sleeping child out of the car seat, and, hugging the little girl close, dropped flat to the deck. The truck driver moved to the left side of his vehicle, wisely putting the truck between him and the shooting.

I hadn’t managed to secure the back doors of the truck before the attack, and now the three goats, happy to escape from their confinement into the fresh air, pushed open the half-closed doors and jumped onto the deck, making loud bleats of liberation.

Another rifle shot, hitting nothing. Before Sosenko could work the bolt action again, I ran to the starboard rail and began firing at him. Going toe to toe with me wasn’t his style, as I’d already learned. He swung out to the right, quickly putting distance between his boat and the ferry. I emptied my gun, but did no damage I could see. I could make out the painted piece of plywood nailed to the stern, masking his boat’s name. He was still playing that game. And he was escaping again. There was no way to stop him.

It had all happened so fast, my angina hadn’t had time to catch up. But now, with Sosenko quickly disappearing, I felt that familiar tension pulling across my chest and under my arms. I holstered my gun and dropped to one knee beside Hector, who was pumping blood onto the deck from the bullet hole below his right shoulder.

CHAPTER XVI

Crouched on the deck now with her child, the mother sobbed and struggled to catch her breath. The little girl, awake and frightened, responded to her mother’s fear with her own shrill screams. In the Buick, the elderly man put his arm around the shoulders of his wife, who sat with her eyes squeezed shut tight, a look of awful pain on her face. Closest to me, the woman with the SUV full of flowers sat rigid in her seat, both hands gripping the steering wheel. The three goats, protesting noisily, nosed about the deck, apparently looking for something to eat. Oblivious to them, the truck driver stood gaping at Hector.

The general counsel of Julian Communications lay on his back, his eyes open, his gaze going right through me. His head turned first one way, then the other, like a slow motion film clip. Blood began to seep from under him, as well as from the wound in front that was slowly spreading a red stain across his handsome white polo shirt. The bullet had gone through him. You didn’t have to be a doctor to know he was in a bad way. He was bleeding out.

The ferry stopped, then shuddered as the captain reversed the engines, and we made for the Greenport slip we’d just left. The mate, who’d taken the stairs to the wheel-house three at a time to reach the captain, ran down again to tell us that radio calls had already gone out for an ambulance, and for the police.

Lisa was out of the Mercedes now, kneeling on the deck with me alongside Hector, who had stopped moving. His eyes were open, I but couldn’t tell if he was still alive. At the least, he was in deep shock. Lisa pressed her open palm against the entry wound, trying to keep the blood inside him. Ingo’s eyes met mine for an instant, and he nodded his head at me. I was right about the danger, he was telling me.

Bet your stubborn, overbearing ass I was right. I felt like smacking him on that bald head of his, but what good would it do?

By the time the ferry bumped back into the slip, I could hear sirens approaching. Officer Phil Rutkowski arrived first, then the ambulance, then two more cop cars, one of which brought the police chief himself, a garrulous official named Nugent, from headquarters in Southold. Lisa left with the ambulance, which sped Hector away to Eastern Long Island Hospital, only several blocks away. I stared at the spot where Hector had fallen. The steel deck, warm from the October sun, was already beginning to congeal the edges of the blood spot.  

Now there was a growing throng of people, policemen, local merchants, tourists and townspeople drawn by the noise and excitement, and a lone reporter from the Suffolk Times who’d heard the police call on her scanner. The Times was a the local major weekly, and if they were on the scene, you could bet that Newsday, Long Island’s big daily, and the New York papers wouldn’t be far behind. So much for keeping Julian Communication’s situation away from the media.

I could see Wally standing at the edge of the group of onlookers, and motioned to him to leave. No reason for him to get drawn into an investigation. And if I got hung up with the police, I might need him on the outside. He slipped away and disappeared.

I knew there was no way of hiding the story any longer, no matter what was at stake for Ingo and the others. Who would believe the assault on the ferry was random madness, particularly after the Newalis drowning less than a week before? We didn’t have Hector to advise us or run interference against the police now, so I made my own choice. I told Nugent a bare-bones version of the truth, that Sosenko was a crazy with a grudge against Julian Communications. I left out the parts about Sosenko shooting at me earlier, because I got the feeling Nugent didn’t like the idea of having a private investigator drawing fire in his jurisdiction, and would love to nail me for obstruction, or any damn thing. So I cleaned up the story and made it sound as reasonable as I could. I thought Ingo would be pissed at me for saying anything, but to my surprise, he simply nodded his head as I talked, and added a few words of agreement. We both knew it would all be on the early evening news. What difference did it make now? We’d already bet Hector’s life against eight hundred million dollars, and stood a good chance of losing both.

Again and again we repeated the story for Nugent, first standing on the ferry dock, and later sitting on the battered chairs of his office at the police station. I told the chief where Sosenko lived, and he put someone on it, but I was certain Sosenko wouldn’t be stupid enough to show up there again. 

In the end, Nugent gave us a rambling, endless lecture about the way we’d handled a dangerous situation, about putting innocent citizens in the line of fire, about taking on responsibilities that belonged to the police. We also got vague threats about being prosecuted, though he never said for what.

Lisa called Ingo’s cell phone from the hospital. The doctors had stabilized Hector, she said, but his condition was perilous. Sosenko’s bullet had torn him up badly, and he was failing. An operation to repair the damage was his only chance to survive, they’d told her, difficult surgery Eastern Long Island Hospital wasn’t equipped to handle. Hector was being loaded into a MedEvac helicopter for a flight to the big medical center at Stony Brook, fifteen minutes away by air, where an operating room and a surgical team were waiting. Lisa said they’d refused to take her along in the chopper. Her voice was calm and even, exactly what you’d expect from Lisa Harper.

Ingo convinced Nugent to let us leave and get to Stony Brook. Not really knowing what to do next, but determined to make a gesture that showed he was both annoyed and in charge, the chief informed me he’d be keeping my revolver until he confirmed the validity of my carry permit, not an easy license to get in New York State. I resisted the impulse to tell him checking me out was probably something he could do on line in a minute or two. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who took kindly to being told how to handle his responsibilities.

Nugent told us he’d have cops across Long Island, and Connecticut, too, looking for Sosenko. There’d soon be a mug shot of this goddamn son-of-a-bitch — his words — on the wire. He’d goddamn well be caught, Nugent told us in his all-knowing way, but until Sosenko was in custody, we’d all better be goddamn cautious.

Rutkowski appeared in his cruiser to drive us back to Greenport, the chief executive officer of Julian Communications and I sitting together in the back seat. As we raced along the north road, I turned to Ingo. “This is it. We can’t screw around any more,” I told him. “We need tight security coverage until this thing —“

“Do it.” He never looked at me.

I called Teague on my cell phone and told him what had happened. “Get some Empire people to the Julian offices, and get some New York cops, too,” I said. “Forget low profile. There are no secrets any more. Julian employees are going to hear about this and they’ll be nervous. They should know they’re being protected by professionals with guns.”

“Why do you think Sosenko wants to hit any of the Julian people in New York?” Teague said on the phone.

“Not sure he does. Don’t know if he’ll head back to New York at all. Certainly couldn’t be there yet. But tell your guys to stay close to Brody. He says Sosenko was stalking him.”

“Let me jump on this right now. Have to pull extra people in,” he said. Then, “Oh, and Seidenberg?”

“Yes?”

“Beautiful fucking job, Seidenberg. A real pro, that’s what you are.”

I thought of five different things that would make me feel better if I said them to Teague, but there was Empire’s biggest client sitting right next to me, so I didn’t say any of them. Just hung up.

“Brody says this Sosenko was stalking him? Isn’t that what you told Teague?” Ingo said, quietly.

“It’s what Brody told me.”

“Fascinating.”