Red Hook (31 page)

The manager’s head dipped down out of the deep shadow inside the car. “How’d you know it was me?” He sneezed again. “Oh.”

“Thank you for coming forward.”

“Thanks for comin’ down so late. You didn’t bring anybody, right?”

Greenlee opened the door warily and eased his bulk out from under the steering wheel. He wore a baggy brown suit. “You can’t be too careful,” he said. “He’d kill me if he knew I was talking to you.”

“Don’t worry.”

“You’re not wearing a wire or anything, are you?”

Jack shook his head.

“You mind if I make sure?”

“Go ahead.”

The manager reached inside Jack’s jacket and patted his chest and sides.

“So what do you have for me?” Jack said.

Greenlee sneezed. “Excuse me,” he said, and reached into his baggy jacket. Expecting a handkerchief, Jack saw metal. Immediately, he stomped down on Greenlee’s instep. At the same time, he grabbed the hand holding the gun and bent it back fiercely. In a second, he had the manager down on the cobblestones and was jamming his arm up behind his back. With his free hand, he reached back for his .38.

A fierce pain exploded in the back of his head and then he was lying facedown on the cool cobblestones himself. Someone grabbed his hands roughly, yanked them behind his back, and trussed them together. He winced at the splitting pain in his head, but twisted to look up. The nimbus of a streetlight blinded him, but he could just make out the dark figure of a stranger standing at its center.

Greenlee pulled the gun from Jack’s waistband. He stuck it in his own jacket pocket.

“We’re wasting time out here in the open,” the stranger said. “Let’s get him in the car.” He looked down at Jack and shook his head. “If
I
was such a hotshit detective, I would’ve had the brains to call for some backup.”

T
HEY FORCED JACK INTO
the passenger seat of his own car, and then the stranger drove it slowly down Imlay Street, holding a gun below the level of the dashboard. He didn’t say a word. When he turned slightly to make sure Greenlee was following in the Malibu, Jack glanced over: the man was his own size, perhaps fifty, drawn cheeks, liverish complexion. He wore a dark windbreaker over a black polo shirt. The passing streetlights played over his deep-set eyes. He worked a piece of gum as if rolling a pebble on the tip of his tongue, calm as a truck driver on a long night drive. Unlike Greenlee, he was clearly a professional.

They didn’t pass a single soul during the dark ride. They turned onto Coffey Street. As they neared the garage, the stranger turned off the headlights. Behind, Greenlee also extinguished his lights. The little house next door to the garage was completely dark.

Through the windshield, Jack watched Greenlee come around and open the garage door. The stranger pulled into the dark left-hand bay. Greenlee pulled the Malibu into the right. The manager got out and the sliding door rattled down behind them.

Greenlee turned on a small caged light in one of the work pits. Above, a car perched on a hydraulic lift like a guardian lion. The shadowy cave was full of wrenches, crowbars, and other potential weapons, but with his hands tied, Jack knew he wouldn’t be able to use them. Greenlee opened Jack’s door and the stranger nudged him out. The manager held up a gun while the second man pulled out a couple of surgical gloves and worked his hands into them. Jack flinched at the rubbery squeaking.

Greenlee jabbed the gun against Jack’s temple. “Don’t you move,” he said, all jocularity gone from his voice.

The stranger picked up a roll of duct tape, used his teeth to tear off a couple of lengths, and stretched them over Jack’s mouth. Then the two men force-marched him around the pit and across the oil-stained concrete toward the back of the garage. In the dim light, the
Playboy
pinup grinned coyly from the wall. Greenlee clicked off the light. Jack stood still, trying to adjust to the darkness. A door in the back opened, Greenlee stepped out, and the other man pushed Jack forward.

It was dark outside, but a new moon gave just enough light for him to make out a yard filled with junk. The men led him through a narrow passage between heaps of twisted metal and trash cans spiky with scraps of wood. The murky form of a dog detached from one of the heaps with a low growl, but Greenlee kicked it in the ribs and it slunk away.

At the back of the lot, the manager hauled aside a huge metal Coke sign leaning against a fence. The sign covered a gap in the chain links. Greenlee ducked through first, then the stranger pushed Jack’s head down and guided him on, into another dark yard.

As soon as Jack was through, he dodged around Greenlee and ran. Five yards on, something snapped against his thighs and he flipped over. Sprawled on the rough asphalt, he realized he’d run straight into a low-slung chain. He moaned into the duct tape and took quick pained breaths through his nose.

The manager trotted up, snickering. “Well,
that
was cute.” The men yanked Jack up off the ground and shoved him, stumbling, on.

Ahead rose the abandoned warehouse; a sheet of metal glinted dully from each window frame under the faint moonlight. At the back, under a fire escape, a set of concrete steps led down below ground to a door. Greenlee forced Jack down into the stairwell and then, cursing the darkness, he produced some keys and fiddled with a hasp lock.

Inside, a musty, pitch-black space. From the close sound of their breathing, Jack guessed they were in a hallway. The floor was hard and smooth: more concrete. He tried to go slow, wary of what he might bang into, but one of the men grabbed his elbow and hustled him along. They stopped. Metal scraped. Someone turned Jack to the side and gave him a shove.

A bright bare light clicked on overhead, revealing a low-ceilinged room empty save for a card table, several folding chairs, and a rusty bedspring propped up against a plaster wall damp with rot. The room was eerily quiet—no traffic noise, no radios or voices, just the ragged cycles of their breathing.

On the floor in front of the bedspring spread a rust-colored stain. Jack took a deep breath—and gagged at a sickly-sweet odor he knew all too well. Up to that point, he’d been more confused than scared. Now he was seized by a deep, demoralizing panic. Was this what cows felt as they were forced through the final chute in a slaughterhouse?

The manager shoved him down into one of the chairs. Greenlee sneezed violently, then shuffled around behind the chair to tighten the knot binding Jack’s wrists.

“Too tight?” he asked.

Jack nodded.

“Good.” Greenlee sneezed again. “Shit!” he said. “I hate it down here.”

Jack closed his eyes for a moment. The back of his head was pounding; he felt a warm stickiness that was probably blood. He opened his eyes again. He couldn’t believe that when he first met the manager, the man had not raised his suspicions at all. So much for a veteran’s intuition.

“Go make the call,” the stranger told Greenlee. “I’ll keep watch.”

After the manager went out, the man pulled a chair over by the door, sat down, and leaned back till the chair tilted against the wall. He set the gun down on the card table and folded his arms coolly over his chest. After a few minutes he pulled an orange from his jacket pocket, peeled it, and ate it, watching Jack the whole time with a muted professional interest. He wiped his hands on his pants. Bored, he picked at the scraps of peel on the table. He grabbed a piece, took out a cigarette lighter, then squeezed the peel in front of the flame. The vaporized oil flared up. The man smiled.

With his arms strapped behind him, Jack’s shoulders ached as much as his bruised thighs. He wished he’d had the sense to call Daskivitch and tell him where he was going. The dust in the room made his nose itch. What if it got stuffed up and he couldn’t breathe? What if he got an asthma attack? He struggled to shake his head clear of such thoughts. He looked down at the red stain on the floor, then closed his eyes and tried to even out his breathing. His hands tingled with loss of circulation. They hurt till he lost all feeling in his arms.

This was what it was like to be a vic.

How long had he been down here? Half an hour? An hour? He had no idea. The back of his neck was caked with drying blood.

A faint noise sounded above and the stranger rose from his chair.

Muffled voices outside the door. The door scraped wide and Greenlee entered, followed by Randall Heiser, wearing a charcoal-gray suit. Heiser’s habitual scowl brightened at the sight of Jack.

Another man moved into the doorway. His short, massive arms hung wide of his body as if he’d left a coat hanger inside his black satin baseball jacket. The kind of crew-cut, pig-eyed weightlifter who might delight in working as a club bouncer—he was big enough to throw a dead body over a fence all by himself. He stood just inside the door with his meaty hands folded over his crotch and stared in a very odd way—Jack wondered if he was the one who liked knives.

Jack’s captor scowled at the new arrival. “Who the hell is this?”

Heiser pulled out a handkerchief, dusted off one of the folding chairs, then sat with a smug smile. “He’s my new friend. Don’t you worry about it. Ah thought it might be nice to have someone watching my back.”

The first strangers mouth worked as if he had just bit into something bitter. “You don’t trust me?”

Heiser shrugged. “Mistakes have been made. I need to make sure you boys do this one neat.” He pulled a small bottle of spring water from his suit pocket; Jack watched jealously as he cracked the top, took a long pull, and set the bottle down under his chair.

“Free up his mouth,” Heiser told Greenlee.

The manager moved forward and ripped the tape away. The skin around Jack’s mouth burned. He drew several deep breaths. “Are you out of your mind? I’m a New York City police detective—do you realize what kind of trouble you’re in right now?”

Heiser nodded at the sallow man, who stepped forward and calmly punched Jack in the mouth.

He decided it might be a good idea to shut up.

A phone trilled. Heiser pulled a tiny cellular out of his jacket, got up, and walked across the room. “I’ll be home soon. Yes…No…Don’t wait up. An hour and a half, two at the most.” He hung up and grinned. “Time to go—can’t keep the wife waiting.”

Jack licked his lip—it was wet and salty where the blow had split the skin. “Tell me something,” he said. “I know why you had Ortslee killed, but why get rid of a harmless kid like Tomas Berrios?”

“Don’t you think it would be a bad sahn if I answered that?” Heiser said. He paused to let the implication sink in, then grimaced. “Since you asked, that greasy little wetback invaded my privacy. Just as you’ve done.”

“He went into your apartment?”

“That’s right.”

“What did he do? What did he find?”

Heiser’s eyes narrowed. “He had no right to enter my home. To go into my
den
.”

Jack shook his head. Every killer he’d ever met had some “justification” for his crime. He prodded the man on. “I know what you’re up to. I know all about the garbage.”

Heiser’s eyes narrowed. “I think it’s time to wrap this up.”

“What was it? Was it the plans for the waste transfer station?”

Like a confused animal, Heiser considered Jack. “He took my blueprints,” he finally muttered.

“What did he want?”

Heiser snorted. “It was
puhthetic:
he asked for fifty thousand dollars. “You know what he said?”

Jack waited.

“He said fifty thousand dollars to him was like only fifty dollars to me.” Heiser picked a piece of lint off his pants leg. “I told him I wasn’t interested in having my money translated into greasy wetback dollars. But I did say that I’d pay him. I asked him to meet me right here, in fact.” He looked down at the bloodstain on the floor and nodded.

Jack sat up straight in his chair. “All right. Maybe you could get away with killing a porter and an old barge captain. But you won’t get away with making an NYPD detective disappear. Every cop in town will be on the case.”

Heiser grinned. “It might raise a ruckus if you just vanished. But what if you had a bad car accident tonight? What if you’d been drinking? You’ve had some problems with the booze recently, haven’t you, Detective? Going to AA meetings and all.”

Jack stared. He remembered a strange hunched man checking him out at one of the meetings.

Heiser took a pint bottle of liquor out of his pocket and unscrewed the cap.

Jack turned away and clenched his mouth shut. Heiser nodded to the first stranger, who went around behind Jack, grabbed him by the throat, and clamped a hand firmly over his mouth and nose. He struggled until he almost fainted. When the man finally removed his hand, Jack gasped for air. Heiser stepped forward, upturned the bottle, and rammed it into Jack’s mouth. He couldn’t help inhaling a gulp of fiery whiskey. He choked and sputtered. Heiser and the stranger repeated the harsh procedure until he had downed half the bottle.

“We should get going,” the goon in the baseball jacket said, standing over by the door.

“Good idea,” Greenlee said, rubbing his eyes. “This dust is killing me.”

Heiser looked at his watch. “All right. Let’s get it done.”

It was the first stranger who stepped forward. He reached down under the bedspring and pulled out a strange black canvas roll. He set it on the card table and untied it. Jack’s stomach dropped: it was a chef’s knife kit. The man spread it open, examined his options, and pulled out a small, thin, hooked blade. Fillet knife.

Jack couldn’t suppress a low moan. He thought he might pass out.

The goon in the baseball jacket gave a nervous glance at his boss. “I thought you said we were gonna smash up his car.”

“Why wait?” Heiser said. “He doesn’t have to be alive for that.”

“You’re making a big mistake,” Jack said.

“Hush,”
Heiser said. He nodded at the stranger. “Let’s show the detective what happens to people who interfere with my business.”

The man calmly poured some oil on a whetstone and sharpened the weapon; each pass made a scraping noise that reminded Jack of Heiser sitting in his fancy apartment, grinding his onyx stones in his closed palm. The stranger hefted the knife and took a step.