Chapter 33
Kat had asked the men several times where they were taking her.
The thin man sitting next to her just smiled and pointed the gun at her. The guy driving kept his eyes on the road. From the back, all she could see was a perfectly shaved head and shoulders the size of bowling balls. Kat kept prattling on—where were they going, how long would it take to get there, who were they?
The thin man sitting next to her kept smiling.
The ride ended up being short. They had just gone through the center of Water Mill when the silver Mercedes veered to the left onto Davids Lane, heading toward the ocean. They turned off onto Halsey Lane. Ritzy neighborhood.
Kat now had a pretty good idea where they were heading.
The car slowed past an enormous estate blocked off by a solid wall of high shrubs. The hedge wall stretched for several hundred yards before being interrupted by a drive protected by a completely opaque gate. A man in a dark suit and sunglasses, with an earpiece, talked into a sleeve microphone.
The gate opened, and the silver Mercedes pulled up the drive toward a sprawling Gatsby-esque stone mansion with a red tile roof. White Greco-Roman statues and cypress trees lined the drive. The courtyard featured a round pool with a high-spouting fountain.
The smiling thin man said, “If you please.”
Kat got out on one side of the car, Smiley the other. She stared up at this mansion from another era. She had seen old photographs of it. A wealthy industrialist named Richard Heffernan had it built in the 1930s. His family had held on to it until about ten years ago, when the current owner purchased it, gutted it, and, if rumors were true, spent ten million dollars on the renovation.
“Lift your arms, please.”
She complied while yet another dark-suited man in sunglasses frisked her with so much enthusiasm Kat almost asked for a penicillin shot. Smiley had already taken her gun and her phone, so there was nothing to find. Back in the day, her father had always carried a spare gun in his boot—Kat had often debated doing the same—but this guy would have found it for sure. When he was finished (and practically smoking a cigarette, for crying out loud), he nodded toward Smiley.
Smiley said, “This way, please.”
They headed past a lush garden that seemed to be straight out of some glossy high-end magazine, which, Kat supposed, it probably was. The ocean was spread out in front of them now, almost as though it had gathered on command for a postcard shot. Kat could smell the salt air.
“Hello, Kat.”
He was waiting for her on a porch with cushioned teak furniture. He wore all white, too-fitted clothing. This was maybe a passable look on a young, well-built man. On a squat, flabby man in his seventies, it was nearly obscene. The buttons of his shirt strained against his gut—that is, the buttons that weren’t already undone, revealing a line of chest hair long enough for a curling iron. He wore gold rings on pudgy fingers. He had either a full head of sandy hair or a great toupee; it was hard to tell which.
“So we finally meet,” he said.
Kat wasn’t sure how to react. After all these years, after all the reading and obsessing and hating and deserved demonizing, Willy Cozone finally stood in front of her.
“I bet you pictured this day for a long time,” Cozone said to her.
“I have.”
Cozone spread his arms toward the ocean. “Was it anything like this?”
“No,” Kat said. “You were in handcuffs.”
He laughed at that as though he had never heard anything so funny in his life. Smiley the thin man stood next to her, hands folded. He didn’t laugh. He just smiled. One-trick pony.
“You can leave us, Leslie.”
Smiley Leslie did a half bow and walked away.
“Would you care to sit?” Cozone asked.
“No.”
“How about some iced tea or lemonade?” He held up his own glass. “I’m having an Arnold Palmer. Do you know what that is?”
“I do, yes.”
“Would you like one?”
“No,” Kat said. “Not to put too fine a point on this, but it is against the law to kidnap a person at gunpoint, especially a police officer.”
“Please,” Cozone said. “Let’s not waste time with minutiae. We have matters to discuss.”
“I’m listening.”
“Are you sure you won’t sit?”
“What do you want, Mr. Cozone?”
He took a sip of his drink, watching her the whole time. “Perhaps this was a mistake.”
Kat said nothing.
He started walking away. “I will have Leslie drop you back at your car. My apologies.”
“I could charge you.”
Cozone waved a hand in her direction. “Oh, please, Kat. May I call you Kat? I’ve beaten far more solid charges. I can produce a dozen witnesses who will verify my whereabouts. I can produce a surveillance video showing you were never here. Let’s not waste our time playing games.”
“That goes two ways,” Kat said.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, don’t give me the ‘I’ll have Leslie drop you back’ crap. You brought me here for a reason. I would like to know what it is.”
Cozone liked that. He took a step toward her. His eyes were a light blue that somehow on him still looked black. “You are stirring up trouble with your current investigation.”
“My investigation isn’t current.”
“Good point. Your father has been dead a long time.”
“Did you have him killed?”
“If I did, what makes you think I’d ever let you leave here alive?”
Kat knew everything about Cozone—his birth date, his family history, his arrest record, his residences (like this one)—from studying his file. But it was always different when you see someone in person for the first time. She stared at his light blue eyes. She thought about the horror that those eyes had seen over their seventy-plus years. And how, in a sense, that horror never reached them.
“Theoretically,” he continued, in a tone that bordered on the bored, “I could put a bullet in your brain right here. I have several boats. We could dump you at sea. Yes, your fellow officers would search hard, but we both know that they would find nothing.”
Kat tried not to swallow. “You didn’t bring me here to kill me.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’m still breathing.”
Cozone smiled at that. He had small peg teeth that looked like decaying Chiclets. His face was the kind of smooth that suggests a chemical peel or Botox. “Let’s see how our conversation goes first, shall we?”
He collapsed into the cushioned teak and patted the seat next to him.
“Please sit.”
As she did, a shiver passed through her. She could smell his cologne—something cloying and overly potent. The two chairs faced the ocean rather than each other. For a moment, neither of them said anything, both staring out at the churning surf.
“A storm is coming,” he said.
“Ominous,” Kat said, aiming for sarcasm and falling a little short.
“Ask the question, Kat.”
She said nothing.
“You’ve waited nearly twenty years. So here’s your chance. Ask me.”
She turned and watched his face. “Did you have my father killed?”
“No.”
He kept his gaze on the water.
“Am I just supposed to believe you?”
“Do you know I’m from the old neighborhood?”
“Yep. Farrington Street near the car wash. You killed a kid when you were in fifth grade.”
He shook his head. “May I share a secret with you?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“That story about me and the hammer is an urban myth.”
“I talked to someone whose brother went to school with you.”
“It’s not true,” he said. “Why would I lie to you about that? I like the myths. I’ve even had a hand in cultivating them. They’ve eased my way, to some degree. Not that it was easy. Not that my hands are clean. But fear is a wonderful motivating tool.”
“Is that a confession?”
Cozone put his wrists together as though waiting for the cuffs. She knew that nothing he said here would be admissible or even helpful, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to stop talking.
“I knew your father,” he said. “We had an understanding.”
“Are you saying he was crooked?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m explaining to you that I had nothing to do with your father’s death—that we were from the same world, he and I.”
“So you never killed anyone from Flushing?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
“So what exactly are you saying?”
“Over the years, you have caused several of my enterprises to, let us say, interrupt services.”
She had busted the heads of any “enterprise” even rumored to be connected to Cozone. She had, no doubt, cost Cozone money.
“Are you trying to make a point?” Kat asked.
“I don’t want those days brought back again.”
“So you thought by telling me that you didn’t kill my father, it would all end?”