Liars & Thieves: A Novel Read online

  “These are very heavy people. Regardless of what happens here in the next few minutes, if they want you, you’re dead.”

  “They want Goncharov and he’s still breathing.”

  “Not for long.”

  Seconds ticked past. One of the women on the porch began taking off her blouse as her audience clapped and urged her on.

  “How long are we going to do this Mexican standoff?” the man asked.

  “Until I let you move.”

  Jake could see him breathing deeply, thinking.

  “Maybe you should drop the weapon before you get tempted.”

  The man released his gun, and it fell with an audible clatter on the gravel. In the darkness it was hard to see what it was, but it appeared to be a submachine gun of some sort.

  “You know,” the man said, his tone matter-of-fact, “I’m thinking of walking across that boardwalk and up the beach.”

  “Your funeral.”

  “Those guys come out of your house, they’re going to come looking for me and the guy across the street.”

  “I’ve got enough bullets for them, too.”

  The girl on the porch threw her bra onto the lawn as her audience cheered appreciatively.

  “When they come out of that house,” the gunman said just loudly enough for Jake to hear, “I’m going to leave my weapon where it is, get up, and walk toward the boardwalk to the beach.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “You won’t shoot me in the back.”

  “This isn’t a cowboy movie. Why don’t you just lie down right where you are and put your hands behind your head ? Tomorrow you’ll still be alive.”

  Perhaps the man would have obeyed the admiral if he had had time to think about it. But time was up. A bus braked to a halt on the highway, blocking the entrance to the street, and a dozen soldiers carrying weapons piled out of the door and came running down the street.

  The man in front of Jake simply started to his left, toward the boardwalk and the darkness beyond it. He walked normally, his hands at his sides.

  Jake Grafton pointed the MP-5 at the center of his back and pulled the trigger. The silenced weapon bucked and coughed; five bullets hammered the gunman to the ground before Jake released the trigger.

  “There’s two of them in the house,” Grafton roared at the top of his lungs.

  The man across the street fired a burst toward Jake. The weapon wasn’t silenced—the thunder filled the street. The man tossed a burst toward the oncoming soldiers, then turned and dashed for the boardwalk.

  As he ran he sprayed bullets in Jake’s direction. He managed four running steps before Jake’s bullets scythed him down. The dying man held the trigger of his weapon down as he fell, emptying the remainder of the magazine into the ground and a nearby car in one long drumroll.

  Curses and screams came from the party porch. Half the people there tried desperately to crowd through the door into the house; the others threw themselves flat.

  Five minutes passed before the gunmen in Grafton’s house surrendered. The soldiers had them lying facedown on Jake’s small front lawn when the first police officer came running from the highway with his pistol in his hand.

  Willie was on his third beer when the van blew up. I was scoping out a hot chick two tables over who was giving me the eye over her boyfriend’s shoulder when I heard the detonation and felt the concussion, which rattled the window and caused glasses behind the bar to fall off the shelf and break. I looked toward the van in time to see the expanding fireball and pieces flying into the air.

  “Damnation!” Willie exclaimed. “Somebody blew the son of a bitch up! Did you see that?”

  Pieces began raining down on the sidewalk and street outside the bar. The bigger ones fell first and bounced, then the little bits fluttered down. Metal snow.

  “Shit like this don’t happen in Washington,” Willie remarked, which was of course a lie without a hair on it. His collection of scars proved that.

  “Stay here!” I ordered, and charged for the door.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. The van wasn’t crumpled or burned out—it was gone! Whoever had decided to take it out had not stinted on the explosives. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, I suppose. The asphalt where the van had been parked was on fire, giving off stinking black smoke. The carcasses of two of the tires were on fire—where the other two and the spare had gone I had no idea. There was a misshapen lump of metal in the middle of the asphalt fire that might have been the remains of the transmission and drive train. The vehicles parked in front and behind the van were severely damaged, smashed in as if they had taken hits from Thor’s hammer. I looked around for the bodies of pedestrians or winos—didn’t see any, which was a miracle.

  The bomb was detonated by either a timer or radio device. I assumed that whoever had blown up the van probably didn’t know Willie and I weren’t in it. They didn’t care about the van; they wanted us dead.

  The windows of the ground floor of the hotel were missing, blown to bits and fired as shrapnel into the hotel by the blast. Across the street a jewelry store and drugstore had lost their windows, and indeed, smoke was coming out of them. Burning debris must have been thrown in there by the blast.

  As I watched, security people began running out of the hotel, milling around with drawn weapons. A police cruiser roared up and screeched to a stop—in the distance I could hear a wailing siren. And onlookers were beginning to gather. Gawkers arrived in twos and threes, wandered up and stood staring at the smoking, stinking fire and rubble, a scene made all the more ghoulish by the flashing lights of the police cruiser’s beacon.

  There was a body, ripped up by flying debris. The onlookers pointed it out to the police.

  Then someone found the remnants of a second person.

  The hell of it was that I had a pretty good idea who had planted the bomb. I wondered if he was the button pusher or if he left that chore to someone else. Or did he just use a clock? If he were real smart he would be two states away when the thing blew. Then again, people who plant bombs often have this sick desire to be around when the thing goes off so they can watch the fire and the firemen, see the blood and gore, smell it, count the bodies …

  I thought he might want to be close by.

  But where was he?

  About that time the gas tank in the truck that had been parked in front of the van ignited. Perhaps the burning asphalt got to it.

  The first fire truck roared up, then another; police vehicles came from all directions. Extinguishing the fires in the street was the firefighters’ first priority, so that they would have room to attack the blazes taking hold in nearby buildings.

  How much explosives had that guy used?

  The sidewalks were filling up with onlookers as the firefighters fought the fires in the drug and jewelry stores, police investigators and paramedics examined the corpses, and investigators poked and prodded at the remains of our van. The police quickly rigged yellow crime scene tape. A uniformed female cop pushed me and a bunch of other folks back as the tape went up in front of us. She was a slip of a thing, her hat cocked at an angle. She looked like a sausage in her bulletproof vest, complete with belt, holster, gun, spare ammo, mace, and radio. I don’t know how she walked.

  I knew it was time to leave when the first television crew turned on their lights and got their reporter on the air.

  That’s when something jabbed me in the back and a familiar voice said softly, “I didn’t think you’d be in that van when it popped. Told them that, but they said to blow it anyway. I think the bugs you planted pissed him off.”

  The lady cop immediately in front of me had her back to me and was oblivious to my situation.

  If I tried to elbow the pistol out of my back as I turned, more than likely he would put one in my kidney.

  He grabbed my upper left arm and jabbed the pistol barrel deeper into my back, then whispered in my ear. “I owe you for sticking that gun in my face, Carmellini. Just wanted you to see it
coming. Adios, motherfucker.”

  I had run out of time and options. I spun left, trying with my left elbow to sweep the gun aside, while I gathered up the female cop with my right arm.

  A tremendous force hit me in the lower back, nearly dropping me. The sound of the shot came simultaneously with the impact—and for that reason didn’t really register.

  Somehow I stayed on my feet and kept turning.

  Joe Billy Dunn’s second shot hit the cop in the lower abdomen—I heard her grunt as the bulletproof vest absorbed the bullet’s energy.

  I pushed her forward into Dunn. His muffled third shot went off point-blank against the vest. Squeezing the trigger had been a reaction, probably, not intentional.

  She collapsed at his feet. As he turned to run, trying to create space between us, the crowd impeded his progress. I leaped over the cop at him … too late. I sprawled on the sidewalk.

  He ran as the crowd parted.

  The cop sprawled and groaning, the noise, flashing lights and stench, screaming, running people … that was the way hell was going to be when I got there, probably in the very near future.

  The only bright spots in this mess were that the right side of my lower back was numb, and I could still make my legs work, so the bullet hadn’t hit my spine.

  I scrambled up and ran after Joe Billy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Joe Billy Dunn ran, so I chased him. It never occurred to me to wonder why he was running away. He had tried to kill me, had even put a bullet in my back—although I didn’t know if he knew that—and if he hadn’t run I’d have taken his pistol away from him and killed him with my bare hands. Maybe it’s my overdeveloped male ego, too much testosterone shrinking the brain, but I thought getting away from me was the natural thing for him to do.

  Of course, the other possibility was that he didn’t want to stand around shooting me until twenty cops in bulletproof vests got their pistols out and used him for their monthly target qualification. If his first point-blank shot had killed me, he could have turned and walked away and no one would have noticed his face. That was probably his plan; it didn’t work out because he got to talking when he should have been shooting. I had absolutely no intention of making that mistake myself. Shoot first and talk later—I learned that from Jake Grafton.

  Whatever his reason, Joe Billy ran like a deer.

  I wasn’t running like a deer, believe me. Not with a bullet in my back. I put my hand back there and pulled it away wet. A glance was enough. I was leaking blood at a fair rate. And I was beginning to hurt. Really hurt. I thought maybe the bullet had nicked a rib or something, because I got a stab of pain with every breath, and it got worse with every passing second. I ran like an old woman in tight shoes.

  I didn’t think he’d run far. When he got away from the crowd and the cops around the obliterated van, I figured he’d turn around and wait for me. To finish the job of killing me. I didn’t figure he’d be doing much talking this time.

  I had him in sight ahead of me when he dived down a subway entrance.

  That was where it would happen.

  I stopped at a fire hydrant, put my right foot up on it, and pulled the Smith & Wesson snub-nose .38 from the ankle holster. Just lifting my foot made my back scream.

  I crossed the street and went down the entrance there. Went down very carefully.

  These subway entrances join up at the bottom of the first flight of stairs … if I picked the right entrance to descend.

  I had. Joe Billy wasn’t in sight.

  I kept going down, easing around corners. Got to the turnstiles and looked for my man Dunn. He wasn’t in sight. No one was.

  Of course, being an ex–Boy Scout who is always prepared, I didn’t have a MetroCard. I had to heist myself over a turnstile, which cost me some pain. There was a surveillance camera pointed at the turnstiles; I gave the unseen watcher the finger.

  I went slowly down another flight of stairs and got my first look at the platform. Not a soul in sight, not even a mugger or gangbanger. Everyone in town must have gone to bed after the president’s stirring speech.

  Dunn would be to my right or left, waiting to plug me again when I came out of this stairway. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and leaned against the left wall.

  “Joe Billy!” I shouted. “Have you figured out why Willie and I weren’t in the van?”

  No answer.

  “Because we knew you had sold out to Royston. And we told Grafton. Even if you kill me, you’re going to prison for the rest of your life, maybe even the chair. How many people have you killed, anyway?”

  “If I’m doomed, I might as well take you with me, Carmellini.” The voice came from the platform behind me.

  I crossed over to the right side of the entryway, leveled the pistol with two hands. It’s impossible to hit anything beyond ten feet with a pistol with a two-inch barrel unless you use two hands and aim carefully.

  I waited. I could feel a warm wetness soaking the back of my shirt and trousers. How much blood I had lost I didn’t know—I wasn’t feeling very chipper. Just holding the pistol at arm’s length with both hands took about all I had.

  I saw him a second before he fired. He had climbed off the platform down onto the tracks and sneaked along until he was almost abeam the entrance. Then he popped up, leveled his pistol with both hands, and fired. In that masonry tunnel, his pistol sounded like a cannon.

  I was going forward by then, and the bullet gouged the tile on the wall behind me.

  I went all the way down onto my stomach and leveled the snubbie.

  Of course, he wasn’t in sight. He had dropped down below the level of the platform the instant he fired.

  The next time he popped up, he was going to be to my right or left, and he was going to nail me. I was going to die right here, lying on this subway platform.

  As panic flooded over me, I sprang up and dashed for the stairs I had come down. Another cannon shot boomed and the bullet whacked the stairs just to my right—I saw the chips of concrete fly out. I went up those stairs like my tail was on fire.

  I was scared, truly scared. I was an amateur facing a consummate professional in a fight to the death, and I didn’t like my chances.

  The reason he ran from me on the sidewalk outside the Hilton was that he knew I was stupid enough to follow him. I thought I was the hunter and he was the prey. Ha! It was a miracle Joe Billy had missed me with his first two shots. He wouldn’t keep missing—oh, no! You could bet my life on that.

  I was so scared I didn’t even feel my back. I went up the stairs three at a time, running for my life.

  At the turnstile level I looked around wildly for some cover. Got behind a pillar with a trash can in front of me, got down on my knees and stuck the toy pistol out so I could shoot quickly the instant I had a target.

  That was when I realized I was gasping for air. Getting to here had cost me all my strength.

  I listened for his footsteps.

  Nothing.

  My pulse and breathing rate were slowing when I heard a subway train roar up to the platform below and stop. Thirty seconds later it got under way again.

  So where was this asshole?

  Someone coming up the stairs. I heard the footsteps.

  I leveled the pistol. A black kid in a T-shirt and pants that were held up only by the dictates of fashion popped out of the staircase and headed for the exit. He didn’t even look at me.

  He went through the turnstile and on up the stairs.

  Oh, Christ, my back was killing me! Maybe I needed to go find an emergency room right now, before I passed out and bled to death waiting for a good Samaritan. I doubted if there were many Samaritans good or bad in the New York metropolitan area.

  Where was he?

  Fuck!

  And where were the goddamn transit cops?

  My back was on fire. I was on one knee and couldn’t stay there. I sank to a sitting position.

  Tried to keep the pistol up and couldn’t. />
  Where was the bas—

  I glimpsed him on the other side of the turnstiles. He was leveling his pistol.

  I rolled and fired all at the same time. Missed, of course.

  His bullet clipped me on the scalp, just a glancing blow, like a friendly tap from a baseball bat.

  I concentrated on the sight picture. The good news was that I was now flat on the floor, lying on my left shoulder, steady as a rock. I squeezed off one, reaimed the piece and sent another on the way.

  His pistol was firing, and I tried to ignore it.

  I fired again … and knew I had only one more left. He was a small target by then, down on his knees. I cocked the hammer, aimed as carefully as I could, and touched her off.

  Joe Billy Dunn sprawled on the concrete.

  It was all I could do to get to my feet. Went over and looked at him. He had at least two bullets in his chest and one in his throat. The throat wound was bleeding badly. I kicked his gun out of his hand, then bent down and picked it up. If I left it there the first kid who happened along would snatch it.

  “You knew, huh?” he whispered.

  “Royston said his suite was bugged. He said it in O’Shea’s suite, which I bugged after you left. It had to be you who told him.” Blood was leaking down over my ear from my scalp wound. I wiped at it. “How much did he pay you?”

  “Not enough.” He breathed in and out, fighting to stay conscious. “I’ve had a good run,” he whispered.

  “Your luck ran out.”

  “How’d you know I was behind you?”

  “Heard something. Maybe your foot scraping. Maybe I just sensed it. For sure you weren’t coming up those stairs.”

  He coughed blood. When the coughing subsided he whispered, “Just ran out of luck. That’s all. Yeah.”

  I left him there. Didn’t want to watch him die.

  I felt better when I got up to the street. The night was misting rain again, and it felt good on my face. I was weak and tired and suffering from adrenaline aftershock, but I could still put one foot in front of the other. My back didn’t cause me agony—I was just sore as hell.

  I put the empty snubbie in one trouser pocket and Joe Billy’s shooter in the other. Swabbed at the blood on the side of my face, wiped my hand on tree trunks, those baseball-bat-sized saplings growing up through holes in the concrete.