“No, thank God. An agent was shot in the calf, but he’s going to be fine. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded, sweat pouring off my chin and cheeks. I shook my head at the Nigerian woman’s brains on the glass of the meat case, her blood on the plastic-wrapped packages of sausages and drumsticks.
I stood there searching her face, her expression, her eyes for something—anything—that might explain any of this.
But even after another minute, I didn’t see a damn thing.
CHAPTER 53
APPREHENSIVE, ANGRY, AND still very much stunned numb, I peeled myself away from the incredible Queens crime scene at a little past one in the afternoon. I looked out at the rubble and the pockmarked, bullet-scarred brick walls as I put the unmarked into drive.
“Welcome to Beirut, Queens,” I said to myself as I peeled out around a just-arriving news van.
I decided to head home.
First I showered, then I threw my clothes into the wash, since they were making the apartment smell like a firing range. As the machine filled with water, I poured myself a stiff measure of Wild Turkey and cracked open a bottle of Bud and sat on the couch in the blessedly silent apartment.
Probably not what four out of five doctors would recommend at quarter to two in the afternoon, but it actually did the trick. My hands stopped shaking, and I was momentarily able to get the image of the dead Nigerian woman’s brains out of my mind.
I was well into my next round of Irish therapy when the phone rang. It was Chief Fabretti. I sipped bourbon and listened idly as he chewed my ass about the raid. I wasn’t completely sober, but somewhere in there I caught the implication that he thought I might have been responsible for all the deaths.
I decided to hang up on him and shut off my phone.
“There. Much better,” I said as I poured another drink.
I was busy making dinner when Seamus came in around two thirty. Corned beef was on the menu tonight. Being an Irishman from New York, I of course did it the Jewish way, deep-sixing the cabbage and replacing it with rye bread—heavy on the caraway seeds—and mustard to make huge Carnegie Deli–style sandwiches.
I wasn’t really in the mood for eating, but it was Chrissy’s favorite dinner. After what I’d seen today, I wanted to make my baby happy for some strange reason.
“Corned beef? Is it Saint Paddy’s Day again?” Seamus said when he peeked into the pot.
“’Tis,” I answered as I poured a measure of Wild Turkey into a tumbler for him. “And lucky you: you’re just in time for the parade.”
He took a sip and smiled and rolled his eyes. He looked good. Still kicking, which was good, because I loved the old man.
“Ye can stop with the eagle-eye treatment, ya know.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I see you watching me like I’m going to fall over and die. That little incident was a one-off. I’m fine.”
“I wasn’t worried about you, Father, so much as the glass you’re holding,” I said as I patted him on his white-haired head. “That Waterford crystal is a family heirloom.”
“Little early for the bar to be open, eh?” Seamus said. “Was it that thing in Queens?”
Boy, was the old codger still on the ball.
He hugged me then. Wrapped me in his frail arms like I was five years old again, though I was twice his size. As he did it, I could see the woman lying there in her meat-case coffin. I tried not to cry about it, but I failed.
“God bless you, Mike. It wasn’t your fault,” Seamus said.
“God bless us all,” I whispered through my falling tears.
CHAPTER 54
AT FOUR MINUTES past 3:00 a.m., the image appeared on the tablet’s touch screen with the light press of a finger.
It was a live video feed, a grainy picture of a dimly lit downtown alley. With a flick of the touch-screen controls, the camera moved forward, zooming in on the dark face of one of the alley’s shabby apartment buildings. Then, with another flick, the image teetered suddenly as apartment building windows began to scroll vertically, as if the camera were attached to a crane and someone were raising the boom.
The screen showed a window with a yellowed lace curtain, then, on the floor above it, a window covered by some old broken blinds. The next floor’s window was shadeless and showed a bedroom in which a lean Asian woman was in the process of unbuttoning her blouse in a lit bathroom doorway.
The camera went up to the next dark window for a moment before it reversed itself to the disrobing woman.
“Mr. Beckett, please,” Mr. Joyce whispered harshly. “We have a schedule, you know. If you can’t resist distractions, then promptly hand over the controls.”
“Fine,” said Mr. Beckett, smiling sheepishly as the camera-equipped drone returned to its ascent.