Rough Justice (23 page)

It was hard to tell in the dim light, but he seemed to go pale. He didn't move, though. He stood his ground, solid.

“I'm going to call the cops now, Wells,” he said. “If I were you, I'd run for my life.”

He started to shut the door. I stuck my foot in the opening. He closed the door on it hard.

“Agh! Shit,” I said.

He leaned on the door. I hit it with my shoulder, caught him off balance. He fell back a few steps into the house. I pushed in after him.

I came into a small foyer. A stairway led up from it into darkness. Under the stairway there was a small table with a phone on it. Baumgarten went for it, picked up the receiver.

“The books before the Board of Estimate vote are practically empty. After it, they're full up, too full. Those are your people, aren't they?” I said. “Kicking back their salaries for jobs. You agreed to win over the board if Cooper would give you a place to hide the cash.”

Baumgarten snorted. Looked over his shoulder at me. “You haven't got that. You haven't got a thing.” He started to dial.

I wiped the sweat from my face with the back of my hand.

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I know where to look.”

“Hello, Sergeant,” Baumgarten said into the phone. “This is Howard Baumgarten on Mountain Road. John Wells, the reporter being hunted by the New York City police, has just forced his way into my house.”

I lit a cigarette, dropped the match on the rug.

“He's standing right here, making threats at me,” Baumgarten said. Then he said: “Thank you. I'll be waiting.”

He hung up. He turned to me. He smiled thinly. “You want a cup of coffee? Or would you rather have a head start?”

“I'll stay,” I said. “I'd rather have the Westchester guys take me than the NYPD anyway.”

“Good. Then everyone's happy.”

“And when they do take me, and when the papers interview me, and when they put me on trial, I'm gonna tell them what I think. I'm gonna tell them that the money is on Cooper's books. It leaves a trail, Howard. It always does. And once the feds and the press and the city start looking in the right places, they'll run it down and track it right back to you.”

I could see him clearly now in the foyer. He was pale, all right. Still, his mouth was set, his eyes hard. “You can't prove any of it,” he said roughly.

“I don't have to. I just have to start it off. How much will it take? A story about the money laundry. A piece on Mikki Snow. And then a little investigative work into her death.”

His hard eyes softened. He swallowed, licked his lips. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“You know damn well what it means. You're hooked in everywhere.”

He was breathing hard now. “So if I talk to you, you'll burn me anyway.”

“Probably.”

“So what's the difference?”

“About fifteen years, if you go down for Snow. And you could. Why not? She came to you first.”

He wiped his mouth with his palm. “Listen, Wells, you know that's bullshit …”

“And you know I didn't murder Thad Reich.”

“I have a wife, Wells. I have children. I have a grandchild. I bought her a doll, for Christ's sake!”

“Why did Snow come to you? She want a piece of the action?”

He turned away. In the distance, down below the mountainside: that old siren song, just audible, growing louder.

Baumgarten glanced at the door. “They're coming. There's no time.”

“Talk fast, then. Start now.”

He glanced at the door again. Stalling maybe. Maybe trying to think. “Snow thought … She thought I … She wanted me to stop … To stop passing the money through. She was … She thought I'd forced it on her.”

“On Cooper.”

“Yeah, yeah. She wanted me to take the pressure off Cooper, she said, or she'd … tell the feds.”

The siren grew louder. It was still on the road below us, though. I fought to keep my breathing steady.

A woman's voice drifted down to us from the shadows at the top of the stairs.

“Howard? Is everything all right down there?”

“Yes, everything's fine, dear. I'm just—”

“Come on, damn it,” I whispered.

“Everything's fine. It's just a friend.”

“All right,” the woman said. “Come up soon, though. It's getting late.”

“All right, I will.”

The volume of the siren went up a notch.

“Come on,” I said again. “So she was trying to save Cooper. Trying to keep her out of trouble.”

Baumgarten scratched his bald head. “I don't know. I don't know what she wanted. I kept telling her, I told her: it was Cooper's idea. She came to me, made the offer to me. She didn't have the money to go up against Sturgeon, so she asked me. I mean, she's a savvy broad. I was doing her a
favor
, for Christ's sake.” He lifted one hand. “Snow didn't believe me. I told her, I said, ‘Go ask her. You don't believe me? Ask her,' I said. I said—”

All at once, the siren seemed to break up and out into the night around us. The cop car had turned the corner onto Mountain Road. It was climbing toward Baumgarten's house, coming steadily over the rough terrain. I started panting to the quick rhythm of my heart.

Baumgarten's eyes went back to the door. His mouth trembled. The sweat around it glistened. “I called Celia. I told her what'd happened. She said she'd take care of it. Mikki loved her, she said. I figured there was no … Wells, for the love of God, you'll ruin my whole fucking family.”

The words burst from him just as the red flashers appeared. As they passed over the dark and lit the trees outside. The siren blooped off. The cruiser was coming up the last stretch of Mountain Road. Its lights passed over the hedges.

“Why did you call Mark Herd?” I hissed at him. My teeth started knocking together. “When you came to see me, why did you call Mark Herd?”

Outside, I could hear the cop car slow. I looked over my shoulder. Saw the top of its flasher above the hedge that flanked the driveway.

Baumgarten stared at me crazily. “Run!” he whispered. “Run!”

“It's too late for that.”

“Please.”

“Why'd you call him?”

“Not Herd. Cooper. You can still get out of here. You can go. Go.”

He pointed at the door behind me. I heard the first rustle of gravel as the cop car began its turn into the drive. For another instant, I fought the urge to break for it. Then I heard the gravel crunch as the cruiser started toward the house.

“Run!” said Baumgarten again.

And I did.

26

I bolted without thinking. I bolted for the door. Banged through it, out into the night. The police car was just starting down the long drive, heading forward to park behind Lansing's Honda. The headlights were inching up toward me. I ran straight for them.

I ran to the little car. Crouched down, hoping to keep the shadows over me, hoping to beat the lights. The breath broke out of my lungs as I slammed into the Honda's side. I grabbed hold of the door handle, pulled it back.

The coppers' headlights hit me. The flasher blinded me as its red light whirled over my face. I tumbled out of the glare, into the darkness of the car. I had the keys out of my pocket somehow. I pulled the door shut, fumbling desperately to find the ignition slot. The key kept slipping over the surface of the dash. It wouldn't go in. The lights grew close behind me.

Then the bullhorn thundered. “Step out of the car! Step out of the car!”

The key slid in. I turned it over. The engine gave a dull clunk, then growled and spun.

“Step out of the car now! Step out of the car right now!”

My rear window was all light. White light. Whirling red light. It flashed in my rearview. I had to squint it off.

Keeping my car dark, I threw it into forward. Baumgarten's Lincoln was a foot or two ahead of me. The cop car had moved up quick, locked me in behind. I wrenched the wheel over and hit the gas.

The compact swung around, breathing by the Lincoln's rear fender. I bumped off the driveway, onto the lawn. I careened across the grass, still turning, turning around.

I saw the cops emerging from their car. I saw the black shadows of them in the whirling light. One on the far side, one near me. I saw them stepping to the side going for their holsters. I nudged the brake as the Honda kept spinning around over the grass. Now the lights were at my side window. Now they burned into me through the windshield. Now, through the windshield, I saw the two cops lifting their revolvers, leveling them steady in their clasped hands.

I straightened the wheel out and hit the gas. I sped toward the cruiser, rocking over the broken ground.

For one second, I saw the cop on the near side clearly. His clean-cut, young, and earnest face. His terrified blue eyes. I saw him try to keep his gun steady. Then he cried out and jumped out of the Honda's way, rolling back across the hood of the cruiser. At the same instant, I threw the wheel over. The left tires lifted off the ground as the Accord swerved to avoid the cops. Again, I hit the gas, shot down the driveway, aimed for the opening between the hedges.

And the other cop, the one on the far side of the car, opened fire.

Glass crunched and shattered. I didn't know where. Somewhere on the Accord I heard the sound as the bullet slammed into it. In the wild scarlet light from the cruiser, I saw the hedges rolling closer and closer to me. I pressed the gas petal as far down as it would go. The car bucked and punched out like a fist.

The cop fired again and I heard a whine and a hollow thud as a bullet buried itself in the car's metal. Then I was through the hedges, turning and turning on the rough road, gravel and dust spitting out behind me. I swerved until I was headed down the mountain—and then kept swerving, further and further around.

I hit the brakes. Wrestled with the wheel. Hit the gas again. With a lurch, the little car began rolling forward. Down the Mountain Road, down from the rock.

I turned the lights on then. I saw the road. It appeared to be falling away below me. I followed it, fast as I could.

27

By the time the cops came after me—by the time I heard their sirens start up again—I was off the rock and around the corner, heading away from the center of town. I saw a river wind out of the trees to my right. It ran past a house, tumbled over a waterfall. A dirt path opened on that side and followed the drop. I swung the Honda onto it, plunged down. Suddenly there was forest on every side. And darkness.

I pulled the Accord over to the shoulder—more of a ditch than a shoulder. I killed the lights, the engine. I sat there and listened. The crickets, the frogs, the forest noises rose up loudly out of the trees. Above that, I could still hear the siren. But only barely. It was fading away. The cops had headed off in the other direction. I'd lost them, for a while.

I glanced into the back seat, assessed the damage. A bullet had shattered one of the rear windows. The glass shards dangled from the frame, sparkled on the black seat cover. There was a jagged wound in the cover, too—a bullet hole. The yellow stuffing peeked out of it.

I took my shoe off, reached back, and cleared the shards from the window frame to make the break look less conspicuous. I wondered where the other bullet had gone. I wondered what Lansing would say when she got a load of what I'd done to her car. I could imagine her face when she saw it. It would be like something out of a comic book, all sweat and gritted teeth and rolling eyes. Luckily, there was a good chance the cops would kill me before I had to deal with her.

I lit a cigarette, took a long drag. Started the car again, and rolled off slowly along the rough dirt of the forest road. Now I had to make a plan, figure the odds for getting away with it. Offhand, I figured the odds were lousy.

I didn't think the cops had made my plates. Not with my lights off, not in that chaos. But they had the color and make of the car, that was certain. They might even trace it to Lansing if they put their heads together with NYPD. If I gave them time, anyway, they'd be able to spot me coming for miles.