The Boardwalk Read online

  “What was all the excitement about?” he asked.

  The doctor’s pretty smile vanished. She shook her head. “Terrible. Terrible. A policeman was shot on the boardwalk this evening. Terrible.”

  “Is he going to make it?”

  She didn’t answer. “Come, Mr. Dowd. Let us have a look at you.”

  The doctor examined Gullie.

  “You have some bruised ribs. A mild concussion too. Some bruises. You will live. How do you feel?” Her smile returned.

  “Like an elephant is sitting on my ribs. And someone is hitting my head with a baseball bat. I could use a drink of water.”

  She poured him a glass.

  While he drank, she said, “We’ll tape up those ribs. Get you some pills for your pain. Your head will feel better in a few days. The ribs will take longer. In two weeks you will be a new man.”

  “I wish.”

  They both laughed.

  “I don’t know,” said Dr. Agbay. “You are a very handsome fellow.”

  He shook his head. He always felt his handsome face was more a curse than a blessing. God’s little joke. His face made him stick out even more than his lack of height. More than his misshapen body. It made people pity him. In college, a pretty girl had looked at his handsome face and his ugly body. She said, “What a waste. What a waste.” Those words haunted him.

  “There is a policeman waiting for you,” the doctor said. She taped Gullie up. She gave him some pain pills. “I will send him in.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “You take care of yourself, Mr. Dowd.”

  The policeman who came in was tall. He had big shoulders. A hard face. He wore high black leather boots and a squashed-down hat. The markings of a highway-patrol cop. They had a bad rep. Even among other cops. They were the cops who didn’t play well with others. The ones who didn’t mind the blood and the bodies in car crashes. Gullie had dealt with many cops. Not with many highway-patrol types. He explained to the cop how another van had raced up on him. How it had rammed his van three times. How he had lost control. How he had woken up with people kneeling over him.

  “Sounds about right,” the cop said. “Matches the damage to your van. Too bad. Nice van.”

  “Custom built,” Gullie said. “I hope I can get it fixed.”

  “Should be able to. Damage looks worse than it is. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I see lots of smashed cars.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It will be a while till you get it back,” the cop said. “This is a criminal case now, so the van is evidence.”

  “I know.”

  “So, Mr. Dowd, I’m just taking your statement. The detectives will want to talk to you when you are up to it.”

  “I understand.”

  The cop leaned in close. “But just between us. Do you have enemies? Anyone who might want to run you off the road?”

  Gullie laughed. Then grabbed his ribs. “If I didn’t think so before, I do now.”

  “But why would a—I mean, why would you have enemies?”

  “It’s okay. You meant to ask why would a little runt like me have enemies?”

  The cop turned bright red. “Sorry. Yeah.”

  “Hey, Napoleon had lots of enemies, right?

  The cop laughed.

  Then Gulliver said, “Believe it or not, I’m a licensed private investigator. That’s why the ambulance crew found a knife and a SIG 9mm on me. I don’t do divorce work. But PIS do make people mad sometimes. I guess I made somebody pretty mad.”

  “I was going to ask you about the knife and 9mm next,” the cop said.

  “Everything’s in my wallet. You’ll see I check out.”

  “Okay. I think I’ve got everything I need, Mr. Dowd.”

  “Officer, I couldn’t help but hear the commotion before. My doctor told me a cop was shot on the boardwalk.”

  The cop shook his head. “Yeah. And it don’t look good.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gulliver said. “My sister was on the job. Killed in the line of duty.”

  “Really?”

  Gullie raised his right hand. “That’s not the kind of thing I would lie about. So what happened tonight?”

  “Really bad,” the cop said. “Accidental shooting. A patrol officer shot a detective during a chase on the boardwalk.”

  “What’s the detective’s name? I’ll make a contribution to his recovery fund or send flowers to his wife.”

  “Patrick, I think. One of the guys says he worked out of the Seven-Six,” the cop said. “Yeah, Sam Patrick. That’s the guy.”

  Before Gulliver could even react, he heard the whispers outside his curtain.

  “That detective died on the table. You better tell the other cops.”

  FOUR

  Loss was Gulliver’s worst nightmare. He had been happy. But he feared happiness. Not the happiness itself. He was good with that. Being with Mia this past year was the best time of his life. Before her, he’d known only two happy months. Those were the two months he had dated Nina Morton as a senior in high school. When Nina turned her back on him, she took his joy with her. That was what he feared. Not that happiness was impossible to have. That it was impossible to keep. That happiness was like smoke. It was right there. You could see it. Smell it. Taste it. Feel it. But you couldn’t hold onto it. It was there. Then it was gone. Though he felt joy in his heart, someone or something could reach in and snatch it away.

  Gulliver should have been used to having things taken away from him. Used to having no power over what was taken. Or when. Or why. His life was a history of loss. Things had been stolen from him even before he was out of the womb. And it only got worse after he was born. His real mother had removed herself from his life. She’d given him away when she saw what she had given birth to. Her baby was tiny. Deformed. Gulliver was the runt in a litter of one. Set adrift. Alone in the world.

  Not much had changed since then. He was short. Very short. A dwarf. A little person. What did it matter what he was called? Labels didn’t change things. Labels didn’t soften the blows. Labels didn’t restore what was taken. They wouldn’t change the image staring back at him in the mirror. His head was too large for his body. His body too long for his legs. His legs too short. One shorter than the other. His arms too small. His hands and feet too big. Normalcy had been robbed from him the instant he was created. His distrust of the good things didn’t stop there. The people taken from him hurt more than anything. His adoptive parents were both gone. Nina had ripped his heart out twice with her vanishing act. And, worst of all, Keisha. Now Sam.

  As Gullie felt sorry for himself, that knot got tight in his belly. The highway-patrol cop had said Sam was killed in an accidental shooting. Was it an accident that Sam never showed at Gullie’s office that day? That he never showed at Plumb Beach? Was it an accident that tonight someone had tried to run Gulliver off the road? The same night that Sam Patrick was killed. The same night Sam was going to finally tell the truth about what he knew of Keisha’s murder. Gulliver didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. He didn’t believe it. And when Gulliver Dowd didn’t believe something…watch out! He was going to find the truth. Bruised ribs and concussion be damned.

  Gullie had tried to get right to it. The truth was like a fire lit under him. It sang to him. He could deal with the pain in his ribs. He could stand pain. A lot of pain. For most of his time on earth, he felt life was built out of pain. And the parts that weren’t made of pain were made of loss. But the pain in his head wasn’t like the sore ribs. For the first two days after Mia brought him home from the hospital, he could barely move. Or take bright light. Or almost any light at all. He couldn’t read. Couldn’t watch TV. Couldn’t look at a computer screen. Even listening to the radio made his head want to explode. Then he would get sick to his stomach. He had had concussions before. He laughed at the term mild concussion. It was a stupid phrase. Like minor surgery. No such thing. For two days Gulliver Dowd stayed in the dark. Shut off from the world. Shut
off from himself.

  FIVE

  By the time Gullie’s head felt better, Sam Patrick’s shooting death was already old news. It is the sad nature of our country that violence is too soon forgotten. There are always so many murders. Insane people with guns. Drive-by shootings. Terror bombings. What was the death of one cop in such a world? But it was also true that nothing in the modern world is ever gone. Once it’s digital, it’s forever. So it was easy for Gulliver to track down all the news stories on Sam’s shooting. He had watched all the reports on the Internet. Some of the reports were done on the boardwalk close to where Sam had been shot. And not far from where Gullie and Mia now lived.

  Mia had grown up near Detroit. She had always dreamed of living close to the ocean. So Gulliver made her dream come true. She had done the impossible for him. She had given him love. Made him a happy man. Giving her the Atlantic Ocean was the least he could do. He had purchased a condo on the top floor of an apartment building in Manhattan Beach. Far away from Red Hook. Far away from her bad memories of being kidnapped. Of nearly being murdered. From their apartment, they could see the boardwalk. Beaches that stretched for miles to the east and west. The ocean. Blue-green water that seemed endless. Mia liked to joke that she could almost see Ireland on a clear day.

  Manhattan Beach was next to Brighton Beach. Brighton Beach was next to Coney Island. They shared the same shoreline. In the summer millions of people from all over New York City crowded these beaches. But in the gloom of winter the beaches were empty. Winter winds blew cold and strong off the Atlantic. As Gullie hobbled down the boardwalk, only a few old Russians and gulls kept an eye on him.

  Yellow crime-scene tape blew in the wind near where Sam had been shot. A big splotch of his blood was still on the wooden boardwalk planks. Sam hadn’t died there, alone in the cold. The thought of dying cold and alone made Gullie sad. It reminded him of how Keisha had been killed. Shot in the back of the head. Left to die alone in an empty lot behind empty buildings. At least Sam was in a warm place with people around him when he died. Does it really matter where you die? Whether you are alone or not? Sooner or later, we all find the answer to those questions. Sam found out sooner. Too soon.

  The reports said that Sam was walking on the boardwalk. That a woman screamed for help. That Sam came running to help her. He had his weapon drawn as he ran to her aid. Another cop heard the woman’s screams too. That cop was named Stevens. Officer Stevens was patrolling the boardwalk. He was running too. But he was farther away from the woman than Sam was. What Stevens saw was a man with a gun in his hand running at a screaming woman. All the reports said that Stevens shouted for the man with the gun to stop. But the man didn’t stop. He didn’t say he was a detective. Stevens had no choice but to fire at the man.

  Gulliver pictured it in his head. He imagined Sam running to help the woman. He imagined Officer Stevens running to help her too. Gullie saw how it could happen. It’s sad but true that cops do sometimes shoot each other by accident. Put people with loaded guns in dangerous spots and bad things can happen. Even trained people make mistakes. But Gulliver didn’t believe this was an accident. Not for one second. There was no reason for Sam to have been on the boardwalk in a snowstorm. Sam didn’t live near Coney Island. Coney Island wasn’t even his precinct. He was supposed to be meeting Gulliver miles away from the boardwalk. It was a meeting Sam himself had set up. There were bigger reasons Gullie didn’t believe it. The screaming woman was nowhere to be found. Calls for her to come forward had gone unanswered. And there were no witnesses. The story was Officer Stevens’s story and his alone. With Sam Patrick dead, there was no one to prove Stevens a liar.

  There would be an inquiry into the shooting. That was the law. Until then, it would be impossible to speak to Officer Stevens. Impossible for anyone except Gulliver Dowd. He had his ways. Most of the time, his lack of height, his looks, did not work in his favor. But there were moments when his looks helped. People felt sorry for him. Or thought he was stupid. Or weak. Gullie was a good PI. Maybe a great one. He took pride in getting through doors that were shut to everybody else. That was for another day. Now he had to pay his respects to Sam’s family.

  SIX

  Ahmed Foster was an ex–Navy Seal who had dated Keisha in high school. He and Gullie had met again at Keisha’s funeral. Ahmed and Gulliver weren’t exactly friends. Gullie had hired Ahmed to teach him knife fighting. Hand-to-hand combat styles they didn’t teach you in dojos. Ahmed worked for Gulliver when he needed help on a case. Sometimes Ahmed just drove Gullie. Sometimes it was as simple as standing behind Gulliver and looking tough. Ahmed was African-American. Built like a linebacker. He had a way of staring at you that was scary. Gullie was a lot of things. Scary wasn’t one of them. There were times when they worked together that Ahmed had to use all of his Navy Seal training. Like last year, when he’d helped Dowd rescue Mia from her kidnappers. All of Ahmed’s skills were on display. Mostly, their dealings were about money. Until now. When Gulliver told Ahmed this case might also be about Keisha’s murder, things changed.

  “If this is about Keisha,” Ahmed said on the phone, “your money’s no good with me, little man.”

  Ahmed was one of only two people Gulliver let call him little man.

  Gulliver got into the front seat of Ahmed’s pearl-white Escalade. He was nearly frozen from standing on the boardwalk. Funny how he hadn’t noticed he was so cold until he got into the warm SUV.

  “Where to?”

  “O’Malley’s Funeral Home. You know it?”

  “Coney Island Avenue and Avenue M.”

  “That’s the one,” Gulliver said. “When we get there, stay in the car.”

  “Whatever you say, little man.”

  * * *

  O’Malley’s was full of cops. A police honor guard stood on either side of Sam Patrick’s casket. It was hard for Gullie to be there. It brought back all the horror of Keisha’s murder. There had been an honor guard for her too. But her coffin was closed. The bullets had done terrible things to her face. Gullie had had to go to the morgue to identify her. It had taken months for him to get that image out of his head. Now it came rushing back to him. But he kept strong. He had to. For Sam’s sake. For Keisha’s too.

  Some of the other cops were in uniform. Many were detectives. Gulliver knew most of the detectives from the 76th Precinct. He also knew a few from the 75th Precinct where Keisha had worked. They all had sad faces. Everyone did. Gullie nodded to them. They nodded back at Gullie. He shook a few hands. Walked to Sam’s coffin. Gulliver wasn’t much on praying. He and God didn’t get along. So he just said goodbye to Sam. He also promised his dead friend he would find out what really happened.

  He felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Sam’s ex-wife, Mary. Cops and marriage don’t always mix well. You can’t be married to two loves. Some cops love the job too much. Sam was like that. The job won. Mary and the kids lost. But Sam and Mary had stayed close. Maybe because they shared kids. Maybe because they still loved each other. Gullie thought they did.

  Mary was in her mid-forties. Her reddish hair was going gray. She was still pretty. Button-nosed. Blue-eyed. Today those eyes were ringed in red. Her mascara had run from tears.

  “Hi, Mary. So sorry about Sam. How are the boys holding up?”

  “They’re like Sam. Tough. I don’t think it’s hit them yet. Not really.”

  “Mary, can we talk?” Gullie asked.

  “Sure.”

  Mary Patrick led Gulliver into a small room a few doors down from where the wake was. They were alone. They sat next to each other.

  “What is it, Gulliver?”

  “Do you believe this story about what happened to Sam on the boardwalk?” he asked.

  She tilted her head. “Why wouldn’t I? You knew Sam. If someone needed help, he helped.”

  “That was Sam. Do you know what he was doing on the boardwalk that night? He lived all the way over in Bay Ridge.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows? Maybe he h
ad a date. Maybe he just wanted to think. He liked to look out at the ocean when he had things on his mind.”

  “How was he lately, Mary? I was busy moving, and I hadn’t seen him for a month or two. When I spoke to him on the phone the day he was killed, he sounded odd.”

  She nodded as if she agreed. “He was a bit strange over the last few weeks. We would make plans to see each other. Then he would back out at the last minute. Or he would show up at the house without calling first. He spent a lot of time with the boys over the last two weeks. I could tell something was going on with him. He didn’t look well. He seemed jumpy. When I asked him about it, he wouldn’t tell me. But he could be like that. He could keep secrets. It was one of the reasons I divorced him. He wouldn’t tell me things.”

  “Did he ever talk about his time in the Seven-Five precinct? Did he ever talk about my sister?”

  Mary’s head sank. She put her hand on her heart. “Oh, Gullie,” she said, “I forgot. Your sister was killed in the line of duty too. I’m so sorry. This must be terrible for you. It must bring it back.”

  He patted her arm. “It’s okay, Mary. It’s okay. But did Sam ever talk about Keisha?”

  She shook her head. “No. He was pretty close-mouthed about his time at the Seven-Five. And if I ever mentioned your sister, he would get really mad. Now I have to get back inside.”

  “Again, Mary, I am so sorry for your loss,” he said.

  She didn’t say another word. She just drifted out of the room.

  Gulliver went back to the wake a few minutes later. He walked around the room. He shook some hands. But the one person he wanted to see wasn’t there. He left. He decided that the answers he was looking for wouldn’t be with the dead.

  SEVEN

  Just as he came out of the funeral home, a big hand thumped down on his shoulder. Gulliver looked up.

  It was the man he had been looking for inside. Detective Ralph Rigo. Rigo had been Sam Patrick’s partner for many years. They had been partners when Gullie and Sam became friends. A few months earlier, Rigo had gotten too rough with a suspect. That was Rigo’s way. Fast with his fists. Slow with his brain. The NYPD had put Rigo on desk duty. Word on the street was that they were pushing him to quit. Rigo had tried to shove Gulliver around the first time they met. But Gullie had forced Rigo to his knees with a thumb lock. Since then, they had kept their distance from each other.