It had really been a fun time, even for all our cop kids, who had broken into teams and had wrapped up the night playing an epic game of ring-a-levio. Eddie had been the last one caught as he made a heroic attempt to free his team from jail.
Hearing his squealing laughter again as he was tackled was by far the best part of the night. Hell, the best part of the month.
“These Newburgh guys are all right in my book,” I said to Mary Catherine as we waved good-bye to the last set of retreating headlights from the porch.
“Is that just the beer talking?” Mary Catherine asked, eyeing the half-full Heineken in my hand.
“Well, maybe not just the beer,” I said sheepishly.
Even though the house and backyard and especially the dock looked like they’d been attacked by a host of marauding barbarians, Mary Catherine and I turned our backs on the paper plates. We left all our sleeping, sunburned charges in Seamus’s care and decided to take a long walk around the lake.
We ended up taking the secluded forest path I’d frantically scoured the week before when I’d searched for Eddie and Brian. At the top of the hill, Mary Catherine suddenly stopped and turned around.
“Look. It’s beautiful,” she said.
I followed her pointing finger just above the treetops to a bright, glowing sliver of quarter moon, tinged with pink. All around it, stars—too many to count—sparkled against the seemingly endless navy-blue sky. We could have been the only people in the world, in the universe.
We sat, and I broke out the midnight picnic I’d packed. An old flannel blanket, some Cheddar and grapes, a cold bottle of sauvignon blanc that I had to laboriously work open with the Leatherman tool on my key chain, since I’d forgotten to bring a corkscrew.
I laid out the blanket in the middle of the forest clearing and poured wine into a couple of plastic glasses.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to mix beer and wine,” Mary Catherine said, leaning back with the cup on her stomach and staring up at the sky.
“Midnight picnics are the exception,” I said, sitting cross-legged across from her.
Mary Catherine yawned and closed her eyes.
“You know what would be really great, Mike?”
“What’s that?” I said.
“If we could really go on vacation. You know, one where you’re not working and actually here?”
I laughed.
“That’s quite a concept,” I said. “A nonworking vacation, is it?”
Mary Catherine sighed.
“Or how about for once we could go on a real date, Mike? Three or four hours of just me and you. No kids, no phones. Just two adults together alone, enjoying each other’s company. I would like that so much. Wouldn’t you?”
“You’re right, Mary Catherine,” I said feeling suddenly very guilty.
How could I be such an insensitive clod? I had to stop taking this wonderful woman for granted or I was going to be very sorry.
“Enough of squeezing in a moment here and there,” I said. “You’re absolutely right. I’ll arrange the whole thing. We’ll put Seamus on duty and go wherever you want. Down into the city. We’ll paint the town red. Where do you want to go?”
I waited for a few moments. But even after a full minute, she was still silent. I turned and glanced at her, laughing to myself as I watched her sleep.
“Oh, Sleeping Beauty,” I said as I gathered up the remnants of our picnic. “What did I do to deserve someone as lovely as you?”
CHAPTER 67
IT WAS STILL dark when I heard the doorbell ring the next morning. Hungover and bleary-eyed, I went ass over teakettle into a beanbag chair as I tripped over an inner tube in the unlit family room. I was still in my boxer shorts, dusting myself off, as I peeked out the window and saw a Newburgh police cruiser in the driveway and a uniformed cop on the porch.
“Good morning,” I said, opening the door.
The young, attractive, black female cop smiled and blushed a little when she saw my bamboozled face and skimpy attire.
“Detective Bennett, sorry to bother you so early,” she said, quickly recovering. “Detective Boyanoski sent me. He tried your phone, but you didn’t pick up. Something’s come up. It’s about the assailant who shot your boys. The gang member, Jay D—James Glaser?”
“What about him?” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“He was murdered in jail last night,” she said.
That got me moving. I threw on a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, grabbed my gun, and took a ride into town with the good-looking rookie cop, whose name was Belinda Saxon. Bill and Ed were already outside waiting for me in the Newburgh PD parking lot. Behind them, the sun was just coming up over the Hudson.
“Let me guess. The party’s over?” I said as I got out of the cruiser.
“So’s our friend James Glaser,” Bill Moss said, opening the unmarked Ford’s back door as though he were a chauffeur.
After some coffee and a quick breakfast at the diner out by I-84, we headed to the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in nearby Wallkill, New York, where Glaser had been transferred. The sunny green farm fields we passed had horses in them, rows of corn. I thought about the eighteen-year-old kid we’d picked up the day before and shook my head. How could he be dead on this beautiful summer morning? And how could this bucolic area have a gang problem?
After being processed just inside the steel gate of the maximum-security prison, we were brought into a formidable building to meet with the assistant warden, Kenneth Bozman, in his ground-floor office.
“Twenty inmates from B block went to B yard for evening rec around seven,” the well-groomed, round-faced bureaucrat explained as he drummed his chewed-to-the-nub fingernails on a metal file cabinet next to his desk. “Come seven thirty, James Glaser was seen in a scuffle with another black male. Glaser was dead as a doornail upon arrival of staff. His attacker was still hovering over him. The assailant’s name is Gary McKay, a lifer. He’s been segregated in our special housing unit since the incident.”
“How’d he kill him?” Ed Boyanoski asked.
Bozman stopped drumming and pointed to the hollow of his throat above his tie.
“He buried the sharpened end of a broken mop handle into Glaser’s clavicle,” Bozman said, shaking his head. “Stabbed it all the way down into his heart like a skewer. Unbelievable. What a shitstorm. We’re max security, but we run a tight ship. We haven’t had a murder here since oh three.”
“What’s McKay’s story?” Bill asked.
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him,” Bozman said. “He’s old-school. Drug dealer who used to run the Newburgh drug scene back in the eighties. He’s in for a triple homicide and attempted murder of a cop. Now he heads the Bloods here in the prison. I take it this is a Bloods thing, some kind of street beef?”
“You take it correctly,” Ed told him.
“I figured,” Bozman said. “I mean, McKay’s a homicidal maniac, but skewering a son of a bitch is a little excessive for having a newbie look at you funny.”
“We’d like to talk to him, if that’s okay,” Bill Moss said.
“Wait here,” Bozman said. “I’ll go into the warden and ask.”
Bozman came back less than a minute later.
“Shit. Sorry, fellas. They actually just took him to the courthouse in Shawangunk for his arraignment. Maybe you can catch him there.”
CHAPTER 68
WE PULLED OUT of the prison and went into the town of Shawangunk, which, I was told, was pronounced “Shawn-gum” by the locals. Go figure.
It was a neat and tidy town—hedgerows and farmland, white picket fences. The main drag, as far as I could tell, consisted of a pizza parlor, an industrial building, a water tower, and a fieldstone library. The court was in the new town hall at the outskirts of town, a handsome brick building with a recently cut patch of manicured green grass in front.
Inside, we found McKay with his nine-man entourage of corrections officers and state police sitting inside the cour
troom. McKay was a rough-looking character, an extra-large tattooed black man with a beard who looked a little like Rasheed Wallace when he played for the Detroit Pistons. Since everyone was still waiting for the judge and McKay’s public defender to arrive, we asked the staties to let us interview him. They readily agreed.
We proceeded into a large meeting room adjacent to the courtroom. The room, which smelled as though it had just been painted, was filled with folding chairs and a podium bookended by the American and New York State flags. McKay, in wrist and ankle shackles, shuffled in, escorted by two state troopers. He parked his ass in one of the folding chairs with a clink of chains and sat, scowling, with his eyes closed.
Without missing a beat, Bill Moss opened a folding chair and placed it down in front of the large prisoner. When the cop sat and opened his notebook, he was almost knee-to-knee with McKay.
The differences between the two black men were stark. Bill was a teddy bear, one of the friendliest, most approachable-looking people I’d ever met. McKay was more like a starving grizzly. Even sitting, he was easily a head taller than Bill, who looked uncharacteristically tired, almost depressed. I felt bad for the thirty-year Newburgh PD vet. He’d actually grown up in the now-rough part of Newburgh, near Lander Street, and you could tell that its recent rapid decline was really taking a personal toll.
“Fuck’s this?” McKay said, opening one eye at Bill. “More cops, man? Shit, c’mon. How many times I gotta tell you? I’m tired a this shit.”
“I’m Detective Moss,” Bill said, as if McKay hadn’t spoken.
He took a pen from his pocket and clicked it a few times.
“We’re from the Newburgh PD and would like to ask you a few questions.”
“Fine. Whatever, man. I told them. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell everyone. Ma boy, Jay D, was murdered because he was a traitor to the Blood Nation. He worked with the South Americans and made the Blood Nation look bad. I got the call to do something about it, so that’s what I did. I did something about it. Now tack me on another life sentence and get it over with already. Sheesh.”
Ed and I looked at each other, stunned. The arrogance and complete disregard for human life McKay was displaying was remarkable, even for a hard-core gang member.
Bill, on the other hand, just nodded as he wrote in his notebook.
“Concerning the call you received, who was on the other end of that? Can you elucidate?”
“E-loose-a-what? C’mon, brother,” McKay said, closing his eyes again. “This is the easiest case you’ll ever have. Write this shit down. Jay D needed to get iced. I iced him. Then I’ll sign that shit, and I can get back before lunch. We’re havin’ grilled cheese, and it’s my favorite. We’re done now. My statement here is over.”
Again Ed and I looked at each other. Bozman had been right about this guy being a maniac. Wow, this McKay was one cold-hearted bastard.
“All right. That’s fine. Thanks for speaking with us, Mr. McKay,” Bill said, closing his notebook and tucking his pen carefully back into his jacket.
Bill stood and was about to head for the door when he stopped and turned.
“Actually, there is just one more thing, Mr. McKay,” he said, walking back and sitting down in front of the prisoner again.
McKay tsked impatiently as Bill again retrieved his notebook and pen with slow deliberation.
“What now, man?” McKay said.
“Tonight’s my fiftieth birthday,” Bill said, spinning the pen between his fingers. “I’m going to the Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn. Ever been to Peter Luger’s? It’s the best steak house in New York City. Some say in the whole world.”
“Yeah, good for you, dog. I’m trying to sleep,” McKay said.
“All my friends and family will be there, including my twin brother. Obviously, it’s his birthday, too. My eighty-year-old mom, my kids. After we get up to speed with hugs and kisses and showing each other pictures on our cell phones, I’m going to order a T-bone the size of a phone book and wash it down with a hundred-dollar bottle of Pinot Noir. Then I’m going to go home, drink an ice-cold bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champagne in my Jacuzzi, and make love to my wife on the new Bob-O-Pedic mattress we just bought.”
McKay opened his eyes and looked at the cop in stark wonder.
“After I’m done with all that, you know what I’m going to do, Mr. McKay? I’m going to get down on my knees and pray to God Almighty that New York brings the death penalty back so that you can finally be erased like the horrible mistake you are. Society showed you mercy by not executing you for your first three murders, and what did you do with that mercy? You used it to kill a fourth human being with a sharpened piece of wood.”
“There a question in there, officer?” McKay said after a long beat.
Bill pointed his pen at him.
“No, more like a moral,” Bill said. “Remember a minute ago you called me brother? Well, the moral of my tale is that I’m not your brother and never will be, you murdering sack of goat shit. My brother, like me, has a family, a life, kids, coworkers, people he loves who love him back. What do you have? Victims.
“Before I leave, I just wanted to let you know that if I had the misfortune of having a human disgrace like you for a brother, I’d look for the tallest building I could find and fling my ass off it.”
Bill Moss clicked his pen one last time as he stood.
“Now we’re done,” he said as he left.
CHAPTER 69
IT WAS A little past midnight when Newburgh police sergeant Dermot McDonald drove south in his cruiser down River Road in Newburgh. He rolled past the cruddy industrial heating-oil company that abutted the Hudson twice before he pulled into its driveway.
The company was closed, its parking lot deserted. There was just him, some oil trucks behind a tall fence, the railroad tracks, and the big old rolling Hudson River. It was an absolutely perfect secluded spot for a night-shift cop to grab forty winks.
Or anything else that served his fancy, McDonald thought as he looked inside the knapsack in the footwell of the passenger seat.
Inside were three fat, plastic-wrapped, whitish-yellowish bundles that almost looked like large bars of soap. It was cocaine—three kilos of pure uncut nose candy that he had stolen from a Latin Kings drug bust the week before and was looking to unload on his old friend and high school basketball teammate, Dave Crider, one of the current leaders of the Newburgh Bloods.
The fit, middle-aged cop with silver hair and rimless eyeglasses zipped the bag closed. He took out a piece of Nicorette gum from his uniform shirt pocket, popped it into his mouth, and smiled as he chewed. He could practically taste the seventy-five grand in beautiful, greasy, tax-free tens and twenties that his drug-dealing buddy was on his way with right now.
He’d already decided to take his new girlfriend, Amelia, to Ibiza on Labor Day weekend for her birthday to see one of those techno bands she was gaga about. Amelia was twenty-eight to his forty-six; she had dark hair and dark haunting eyes and lines of tattoos running down the fronts of both of her legs from her waist to her toes. Felt like he was doing it with a carnival freak sometimes—conjoined twins or the bearded lady—but damn, who cared if she scribbled on herself? She was young and freakin’ hot.
Funny where life took you, McDonald thought. Up until a year ago, he’d actually been the proverbial happily married man. He’d only gotten divorced after he found out his wife had been cheating on him with the neighbor at the end of their cul-de-sac.
Her lover was, of all things, a Turkish physics professor at Mount Saint Mary College, a diminutive, balding man in his fifties who sounded and even looked sort of like the Count from Sesame Street. Even now, McDonald sometimes closed his eyes to see the Muppet laughing at him. “I slept with your wife one, two, three, four times. Ah-ha-hah!”
But it had turned out okay. Divorce had changed him, transformed him, made him reevaluate his priorities. He got into truly excellent shape for the first time in his life, started eating healthy, ru
nning, lifting, mountain biking, meeting new people, young people. Amelia. The most important change of all was deciding to finally become a full-blown player in the Newburgh drug game and start raking in some real cheese instead of the pathetic sucker peanuts he was paid by the city.
Alimony? he thought, patting the drug-filled bag. Alimony this!
That’s why he’d decided to rekindle his old friendship with Dave. Now instead of setting picks at the top of the key, he supplied his buddy Dave with protection and tip-offs, and Dave supplied him with a tax-free two grand a week. He also used the tips Dave supplied him with to stage busts where he could steal drugs from the rival Latin Kings. One of your win-win situations if there ever was one.
Just yesterday he’d earned $5K from Dave. Pulling some strings with a friend in corrections, he’d helped to set up a turncoat in Dave’s operation, some punk-ass kid named Jay D, for a jailhouse murder. Amazing the amount of moneymaking opportunities out there once you had a mind to capitalize on them.
To hell with everyone, McDonald thought. His wife, the department, the people of Newburgh. He had finally wised up. He was on his own side now. He was only sorry he hadn’t thought of becoming a corrupt cop sooner.
He checked his phone for the second time. That was funny. Dave was late. That wasn’t like him.
Sergeant McDonald ruminated on that for a minute and then decided to turn the cruiser around to face the street, keeping his back safely to the Hudson.
Dave was a bud, but it was a dog-eat-dog world out here, and you could never be too careful.
He chewed his gum and pictured his new girlfriend’s haunting eyes, lit by strobe lights.
CHAPTER 70
A LITTLE MORE than half a mile northeast of Sergeant McDonald’s parked cruiser, a brand-new fifty-foot sport yacht stood at anchor in the middle of the pitch-dark Hudson River, rising and dipping.