Aphrodite

13

When Justin woke up, he wasn’t sure exactly where he was. He thought he might have passed out in Duffy’s and was coming to on the floor by the bar. It seemed a realistic enough possibility that one of his first hung-over reactions was to get angry at Donnie for not getting him home and letting him spend the night sleeping on a bed of hardwood in puddles of spilled beer and whiskey.
When his brain cleared a bit more, Justin realized that he was not sprawled on a barroom floor. He was in his own home. But not on his bed. He hadn’t made it that far. He hadn’t even made it to the couch. He’d managed to get into his living room, take a few steps, and collapse on the coffee table.
He took a deep, wheezy breath, kept his eyes open for several seconds, trying to clear the haze behind them, and forced himself to stand up. The move wasn’t one of his major successes. He felt himself bob and weave and sway. But he stayed up. He took one step toward his bedroom, had to stop when he was overcome by the urge to puke his guts out. It was while he was standing there, trying to keep his balance and whatever was in his stomach in there, that he heard it. At first he couldn’t place the noise. It sounded like birds squawking. Then he realized it was the buzz of a crowd. Human voices, talking. It seemed disconnected from his environment, but he began to understand that the noise was close by. He managed to take several steps over to his living room window, looked outside onto his small front lawn, and saw that the crowd was standing in front of his house. There were several vans, all with television-station logos on their sides. One had a satellite perched on top of it. A row of cars was parked on each side of the street. Twenty or thirty people stood peering in at him. Several of them had cameras. When Justin’s face appeared in the window, the cameras started clicking and the crowd began to vibrate.
Justin jerked away from the window, making his head feel as if it were going to topple off of his neck. He took several more deep breaths, a foul odor emerging from his mouth, the taste of whiskey and bile forging up his throat. He tried to piece together what was going on. Something to do with the discovery of Maura Greer’s body, that much was clear. But why the hell were the jackals pursing him? He looked at the clock that rested atop the living room mantel. One o’clock. Jesus. He’d slept half the day away.
Before anything, he knew he had to clear his head. So he went into the bathroom, popped four aspirin, brushed his teeth, turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it, and stepped in. As the water streamed down, he slowly turned the knob until it was ice cold. He was awake. Toweling off, Justin went into the kitchen, grabbed a large bottle of water out of the fridge, and drank half of it in one gulp. He went back to the living room, turned on the television, surfed the channels until he came to CNN. Maura Greer was the story. And it was a big one. The media had already sunk their sharklike teeth into it and they weren’t going to let go until it had been torn into tiny little pieces. He pressed the Mute button on the remote control. Sat there trying to absorb what was happening. When he looked up, what he saw on the TV screen surprised him so deeply that he dropped the remote. It was Brian Meves, his fellow East End cop. Brian’s mouth was still stitched and swollen, his face still puffed out from the beating Justin had given him. But he was being interviewed by some blond woman. She had a microphone shoved up to his battered lips. Justin found the remote, fumbled with the buttons, finally got the sound back on, heard the end of the interview, heard Brian saying, “We didn’t know anything about his background. He’s not much of a talker. It’s all been a big shock, on top of, you know, what happened to Maura. Let’s face it, the guy basically had a nervous breakdown, so that’s not exactly who you want in charge of a murder investigation. His recent assault on me shows that he’s not exactly stable. So yeah, I can verify the fact that he’s off that case—”
What? Off what case? What the hell was the idiot talking about?
Justin clicked off the TV, ran to the front door, opened it a crack, just wide enough to pull in the newspapers off the front mat. The second the door opened, he heard questions being hurled at him from the curb. The words didn’t make any sense to him, it was just one loud roar. He slammed the door shut, backed over to his couch as if he were facing down a pride of lions in the jungle.
He sat and read the front page of the New York Times. The entire right-hand side of the page was devoted to the discovery of Maura Greer’s body. He read through to the break, didn’t find any crucial details he hadn’t learned the day before, other than the fact that the weekend Frank Manwaring, the secretary of Health and Human Services, had been in the Hamptons he had several hours that could not be accounted for. It led to even more suspicion that he was involved in the murder and disposal of the body. Justin turned to page eighteen to finish reading the story. But he didn’t get to continue with it. On the center of that page was his photograph. And above it was a headline: tragic hero in the middle of two murders. He read what they had to say about him. The journalist had more than done his homework. He’d talked to cops up in Providence. He rehashed Justin’s history up there. He told the story of the deaths of Justin’s wife and daughter. Justin stopped reading halfway through. His eyes ran back up to the headline. Two murders?
He skipped ahead until he read it.
Jesus F*cking Christ.
The reporter had gotten to Brian. The idiot cop had spilled his guts. He told everything he knew about Justin. Talked about his personality. His violent temper that had erupted when he’d attacked his fellow cop. And Brian said that Justin Westwood had been working on another murder case, the murder of a local journalist named Susanna Morgan. Justin pictured him smiling as best he could through his injuries as he bragged that he was now in charge of the investigation and revealed that there had been a witness to that murder, a woman who had been interviewed by the East End Harbor police and who had seen everything that had happened. She was their best lead, Brian Meves said.
Justin dove for the telephone, grabbed the receiver, and dialed the police station. Gary answered the phone, sounding tense and nervous.
“Where’s Brian?” Justin said. “Put him on the phone.”
“Westwood? I mean …Justin …uh …”
“Get your f*cking friend and put him on the phone!” Justin screamed.
“He …he hasn’t come in yet.”
“When did he do the TV interviews?”
“What? I …”
“Gary, for chrissake, I just saw him on TV—when did he tape that?”
“Last night. They talked to both of us. Around ten, I guess. I watched it last night around eleven.”
“It aired last night?”
“Yeah. They must be showing it again.”
“Did he talk about Susanna Morgan?”
“I …I don’t know.”
“Did he say she was murdered? Did the moron say that last night on TV?”
“Yes. Yeah, I guess he did.”
“Where the hell is he?”
“I …”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. He was supposed to be here at nine. He hasn’t shown up yet. We’ve been calling him but there’s no answer. We figured—”
“Where does he live?” When Gary didn’t answer, Justin screamed into the phone: “Give me his goddamn address!”
Gary rattled it off. It wasn’t far from Justin’s house, maybe a couple of miles. Off in one of the newer developments in East End, the kind that was destroying whatever pretense the area still had of being rustic and charming.
“What’s going on?” Gary asked. “It’s been insane here. The media—”
“Go over to Brian’s now,” Justin said. “If he’s still alive, get him the hell out of there. If he’s not, just wait for me.”
“If he’s still alive? What the hell are you talking about?”
But Justin didn’t wait to hear any more. He slammed down the phone receiver, pulled on a T-shirt and jeans, and laced up a pair of sneakers. He looked at the folder he’d taken from his desk at the station, grabbed it. Then he saw what else he’d taken from the station and he picked that up, too. His gun. A .357 Magnum.
He fished in his pocket for his car keys and ran out the door. More questions were shouted at him but he didn’t even hesitate. Justin ran straight for his beat-up Civic and turned over the engine. One of the journalists’ cars was partially blocking the driveway. Too damn bad. Justin backed up at full speed, ramming it out of the way. As the rest of the reporters scrambled like mad to get to their cars, Justin put the pedal to the metal. His tires screeched, the back of the car fishtailed, and then he was on his way. Three blocks away, when he had a little daylight between him and the jackals, he swerved the Civic into a dirt driveway. It led to a house he knew was at least two hundred yards farther up the path. He drove another fifty feet, out of view of the road and the house, slammed on his brakes, and turned off the engine. He forced himself to wait five full minutes, until he was satisfied that the reporters on his tail had to be scattered all over the place. Then he pulled out of the driveway, his wheels spinning, the car fishtailing again as he made a left, and drove into town.
He was almost certain that the a*shole was already dead. Justin wouldn’t miss Brian or mourn him. He knew enough about death to know that it didn’t change what you were when you were alive. The guy was a jerk. Now he was a dead jerk. Justin wasn’t a romantic when it came to death. Nor was he a hypocrite.
He was also not a praying man. Nor did he much believe in happy endings. So as he sped back toward Deena Harper’s apartment on Main Street, he didn’t pray and he didn’t expect to find that things were all right. The best he could do was hope against hope that he wasn’t too late and that, if he was right about Brian, he could be wrong about Deena and her little girl, and maybe, just maybe, they were still alive.
After turning the doorknob to no avail, knocking as hard as he could and yelling out her name, Justin lowered his shoulder and charged the door. It splintered open and his force carried him through into Deena’s living room. He called out her name and then her daughter’s, ran from room to room, but the apartment was empty. No Deena. No Kendall. But also no sign of violence, so maybe there really was a chance. Just maybe …
Justin heard a noise behind him and he didn’t think, just reacted, whirled, reaching for his gun. He felt a sinking sensation in his stomach, knew he was dead if they wanted him dead, looked up, trembling, surprised to find he wasn’t afraid, was almost relieved. But it wasn’t anyone who wanted him dead. It was Deena, who was staring at him like he was a lunatic, shifting her gaze disbelievingly back and forth between him and the shattered front door.
“What the hell are you doing?” she said.
He didn’t give her a chance to say anything else. “Where’s the kid?”
“Kendall? Why? What …?”
“Where is she?”
“At a friend’s house. What’s going on?”
“What friend? Someone you know?”
“Of course it’s someone I know. She was at school and her friend’s mother picked her up. I have a class to teach, then I’ll go get her. Now what is going on and what are you doing breaking into my apartment?”
“Do you have any idea what’s happened today?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“Have you seen the paper?”
“No. Not yet. I was practicing with my teacher all morning. He was out in Montauk and—”
“You’ve got two minutes to pack some clothes. Just take enough for a few days.”
“What are you talking about? I can’t just pack up and leave!”
“Two minutes. Then we’ll get Kendall. You’ve got to get out of here.”
“What is going on?” she demanded. “I’m not doing anything until you tell me what the hell you’re talking about!”
“What I’m talking about,” Justin said slowly, “is that whoever killed Susanna knows what you saw and knows who you are. My guess is they’ve already killed one person to get that information and I guarantee you they’re on their way here right now, if they haven’t been here already, so they can make it a doubleheader.”
She stared at him wide-eyed. “I’ll pack,” she said quietly.
“You’re down to one minute,” he told her.
Art, the owner of Art’s Deco Diner, placed two mugs down on the table. He had done his best to keep track of who got what, but when he set the mugs down he was too disoriented to remember. “I gotta admit,” he said to the two blond men sitting in the booth, “you screwed up my system. Who gets the peppermint tea?”
The blond man to Art’s left raised his hand. The one to his right said, “I get the English breakfast.”
“I gotta say, you two guys look exactly alike. Can anyone tell the difference between you?”
“I’m the nicer one,” the one on the left said.
Art laughed, said, “I’ll remember that for next time,” and went back behind the counter. He didn’t pay much attention as the two men sipped their tea and stared out the bay window that overlooked Main Street. He didn’t hear the one on the left, the nicer one, say, when Justin Westwood’s car raced up and pulled to a stop in front of Deena Harper’s apartment, “You were right—there he is.” And he didn’t hear the other one say, “I told you we should have gotten the kid. This guy could screw us up big time now.” Art was aware that the first one lowered his voice, but the voice was too low for him to hear the customer say, “Relax. Let’s just go find out what the hell we’re supposed to do now.” He certainly didn’t hear the other twin’s final words, which were, “Well, let’s at least try to kill them both. We deserve some fun, don’t we?” The only thing Art was really aware of was that when he looked up, the two identical-looking men were gone. They hadn’t bothered to get a check but they had left ten dollars on the table, more than enough for two measly cups of tea.
Deena insisted that Kendall sit on her lap in the front seat of Justin’s Civic. The little girl was squirming, wanted to sit in the back like a grown-up, but her mother wouldn’t let go of her. She kept squeezing her and hugging her and caressing her until the girl finally said, “Mommm, this is ’barrassing.” Then Deena let her climb over the seat and sit in the back, telling her to fasten her seat belt, which made her say “Mommmm” again because she’d already fastened it.
After picking up the girl at her friend’s, Justin headed straight for the address Gary had given him over the phone. When he pulled up to Brian’s house, Gary’s car was already parked in the driveway. He’d definitely heeded Justin’s words and come in a hurry. His rear wheels were on the ragged gravel; his front wheels perched on the too-green sod of the front lawn. Justin told Deena and Kendall to wait where they were, not to move, then he stepped out of the car and headed toward the front door.
Gary was standing in the small entry by the archway that led into the living room. He was breathing through his mouth, and breathing heavily. Underneath the young cop’s running shoes, Justin saw a small puddle of vomit on the green carpet.
Justin thought about telling Gary that there was no way to have prevented this. It fit the pattern. And it had been the smart play. It was time to understand that they were up against serious people who didn’t make a lot of mistakes. And when they did make a mistake they fixed it. Immediately.
They had wanted information out of Brian, and as soon as Justin stepped past Gary and into Brian’s living room, he knew they’d gotten that information.
Brian Meves was sitting on a folding metal chair. His hands were tied behind his back; the rope that was used was also looped around the back of the chair. Brian’s feet were bound together and connected to the two front chair legs. He was completely immobile. And he was naked. Not a stitch of clothing on.
The scars and wounds from the beating that Justin had given him were of little consequence now. Whoever had killed him had used matches to get what they wanted. Brian’s hair, feet, and testicles were burned black. When Justin looked at the expression on the dead man’s face, he turned away and felt his stomach heave. It wasn’t just the flavor of last night’s whiskey that rose through his chest and throat. It was the taste of almost unimaginable brutality and violence. And it was the taste of Justin’s own past. He took a deep breath, looked to his left, and saw Gary watching him. Their eyes met and Justin nodded. The nod said that it was all right to be sickened by what they saw.
He sat down on Brian’s couch. Noticed small piles of matches discarded in the ugly green shag carpet. He gathered his strength, shook his head, and tried to find some reserve of pity for the victim. In truth, he found none. Brian had been given a glimpse of what it was like to play with men who were out of his league. Justin had given him that glimpse just two days before, and the kid had had a chance to get out of the game. But Brian was a man who didn’t learn his lessons easily. So he’d learned the hard way—and now he didn’t have to learn anything else ever again.
Gary, on the other hand, was learning quickly. It was a lesson that would stay with him the rest of his life.
Justin Westwood stood up, walked over, and touched Gary Jenkins lightly on his shoulder.
“I’m out of here,” Justin said. “Give me five minutes, then call this in.”
Gary nodded but didn’t say anything.
“You’ll be all right,” Justin told him.
Gary still didn’t say anything, but this time he didn’t nod.
Justin went to the front door and opened it, strode back to his car.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Kendall asked him.
He looked at the little girl, who was still in the backseat, seat belt fastened.
“Yes, honey,” he said. “I found exactly what I was looking for.”
Justin decided to stay on the back roads, avoiding the crowded highway, Route 27. He didn’t know where he was going to go, he just knew he had to get Deena out of town to someplace safe. He found himself heading in the direction of the ferry that would take them to Shelter Island and, eventually, back over the Long Island Sound to Connecticut. It took him a moment to realize why his instincts were leading him back in this direction and then he nodded, satisfied with the decision. What the hell, he thought. If at first you don’t succeed …
Trying to keep everything as normal as he could, he said to Deena, “Check out the glove compartment, will you? Why don’t you put on a CD?”
She opened the compartment, picked through the musical selections. “Tom Petty?” she asked.
“Perfect,” Justin told her.
Deena took the CD out of its plastic holder and squinted at the radio/CD player inserted into the dashboard, trying to figure out exactly how to work it.
“Give it to me,” Justin told her.
“No, no,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
She leaned over to get a better look at the controls. And the second her head bowed down, the window on her side of the car exploded.
Deena didn’t seem to understand what had happened. She started to bob back up but Justin grabbed the top of her head with his right hand and shoved her back down toward the floor. Her back—along with the car seat and the entire front of the car—was covered with shards of sparkling glass. He glanced back, making sure that Kendall was all right. Her eyes were as wide as they could be and she had a small trickle of blood on her cheek, where she’d been cut by a piece of flying glass. But she wasn’t hurt badly and she didn’t look hysterical, only confused.
Justin realized his foot was pushed down hard on the accelerator and the car swerved to the left, crossing over the single yellow line. A truck was coming in the opposite direction, bearing down straight at them. The truck driver had his hand on the horn and the deep, violent blare cut through the silence of the afternoon. It also cut through Justin’s paralysis. He tried frantically to steer with his left hand, realized he was losing control, let go of Deena to grab the wheel with his right, and turned hard. He wasn’t sure it was going to hold. The back of the car hung back—for a moment it felt like they weren’t moving at all, like they were simply hovering on the wrong side of the road—then they straightened out and jerked forward and Justin yanked the wheel again, hard right. As he slipped back across the yellow line, the truck roared past. The driver still had the horn pushed down, and he was screaming obscenities at Justin out the window. But Justin didn’t pay any attention to him.
A car had been parked on the shoulder of the road. It was nondescript. Dark color. Some kind of American boxy piece of crap. The Civic had driven by it at the exact moment the window had exploded. And he realized now that the same car had passed them a couple of minutes earlier, sped past them at one of the few straightaways on the curvy back road. It had passed them just to park on the shoulder. He checked the rearview mirror. The dark car wasn’t parked any longer. Now it was back on the road. It was in hot pursuit.
Justin floored the accelerator, kept it floored until he came to the first turnoff he could take. A small road leading up into the woods. He didn’t know where it led, but he decided to take it. And to take it at full speed. The dark car followed, its tires squealing as it made the sharp turn. Justin heard the ping of metal hitting metal. There had to be two men in the car because shots were being fired from the passenger seat, probably trying to take out a tire. He kept his foot pressed down, urging the car forward. A quarter of a mile later, he saw another turnoff and he took that, too. It led through an open iron gate. The Civic was pushing seventy, and now it was slicing through the grounds of some kind of institution. Justin saw a building ahead of them and drove straight for it. In the mirror he saw the dark car appear and make the turn. He jammed his foot down on the pedal as hard as he could. When he went over the first speed bump he thought Deena might actually go flying right through the roof. But he refused to slow down and she grabbed at the door handle for something to hold on to. He saw the dark car stop short. He watched as it quickly went into reverse, backed out of the gate, turned, and disappeared. By the time Justin screeched to a full stop he realized they were safe. The dark car had called it quits.
He tried to orient himself. They were surrounded by acres of lush green grass, with patches of water and sand scattered about. Then it hit him. They had stopped in front of the austere clubhouse of the East End Golf and Tennis Club. The serenity was startling. There was no noise at this place. No movement. Certainly no sense of any urgency or that anything more crucial than a makable three-foot putt might be happening anywhere in the world. He looked out through the windshield, which was badly cracked now, to see every caddy, golfer, and pro-shop worker standing in place, frozen, staring at the car.
The whole thing, from the moment the bullet had hit the window until now, had taken maybe sixty seconds.
“Are you all right?” he asked Deena.
She turned to the backseat, reached behind her, and pulled Kendall back up to her, squeezing her even harder than she had before and saying, “Are you all right, baby?”
Kendall’s only response was “That was fun. And I’m not a baby.”
When Deena kissed the girl on the forehead, she said, “You’re bleeding!” but Kendall brushed her fear aside and said, “I’m okay.” When Deena touched her daughter’s cheek, the girl said, “I’m okay, Mom. Really.”
Deena turned to Justin now and said, “What happened?”
“Somebody took a shot at us. At you.”
“Who …how …where …?”
“I don’t have answers to any of that.”
“What are you going to do? They’re getting away. Aren’t you going to go after them?”
“Not with the little girl here,” he said. “I’d never find them anyway. And I didn’t get the license plate or a real make.”
“I’m not a baby or a little girl,” Kendall said. “I’m almost eight.”
“You’re right,” Justin said. “I apologize.” And then in a stage whisper, he added, “I’m just trying to make your mom feel better.”
The girl nodded at him, understanding. Justin reached into the left front pocket of his pants, was pleased to find his cell phone still there. He dialed the police station. Gary answered the phone and when he heard who it was, he didn’t even bother to answer, just yelled across the room, “It’s Westwood, sir. He’s on the phone.”
Justin heard some vague movement in the background, then Agent Len Rollins was talking to him.
“Where the hell are you?” Rollins said. Then, without waiting for an answer, he said, “It doesn’t matter. I want you to get here immediately.”
“No can do, Agent Rollins, sir,” Justin said. “What did you say?”
“I said I can’t … let’s see, how would you FBI a*sholes put it: I can’t comply with your orders. Sir.”
“Detective Westwood, we have an emergency situation here and I want you at the station immediately.”
“I’m with Ms. Harper,” Justin said. “And her lovely daughter.” He winked at Kendall and she nodded approvingly. “My priority is getting them to a safe place.”
“This station will be plenty damn safe,” Rollins said. “Bring them in now.”
“Maybe you haven’t heard, Agent Rollins, sir. One police officer’s already been killed. …”
“I’ve heard. And I’ve seen.”
“But I don’t think you’ve heard that somebody just did his best to take us out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Somebody just took a shot at us. I’m not feeling as if East End Harbor is the safest place to be at the moment.”
“Where are you?”
“Try another question.”
“Goddammit, Westwood! Where are you taking them?”
“Not sure yet. But when I am …well …I’d like to say you’ll be the first to know, but I’d probably be lying. It’s my belief, sir, that the reason my fellow officer had his balls burned off is because you f*cked up. So I think I’d rather take my chances on my own for the moment.”
“Detective Westwood, I will personally put out a federal warrant for your arrest. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re going to be in if you don’t get over here and bring your witness with you?”
“I have a pretty good idea,” Justin said. Then he added “sir” one more time. And then he hung up.
They all stayed silent in the car for a few moments. Justin saw several people from the clubhouse now start to move toward them slowly and cautiously. Justin realized he hadn’t turned off the motor. He shifted the car into reverse, backed up and turned around, and slowly began heading back down the long driveway, away from the building and the golfers and East End Harbor’s most visible symbol of luxury and ease.
“What are we going to do?” Deena said, her voice huskier and more tremulous than he’d ever heard it.
“We’re going to find out what the hell is going on,” Justin told her.
“And once we find out?”
“Then we’ll be able to do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“Get the bad guys, put them in jail, and go back to our normal lives.”
Deena looked at Kendall, who was peering at her anxiously. She forced herself to smile at her daughter and smoothed the dirty-blond hair back off the girl’s forehead. “Do you really believe that?” she asked Justin. “About solving everything and making sure everything’s going to be okay?”
“You don’t know me very well, do you?”
“Is that a yes?” she asked.
The car pulled slowly onto the street and turned left. With his right hand, his shirtsleeve pulled up over his fingers to protect them, Justin wiped some of the broken glass off of the top of the dashboard. With his left hand, he steered the car toward the ferry.
“That’s a big fat no,” he said with a shrug. “But I’ll do the best I can.”