The Boardwalk Read online

  “What?”

  “That someone in a stolen van should try to run you off the road. Most car thieves I know try to keep out of trouble.” The detective shook his head. “But this guy seemed to go out of his way to call attention to himself. He comes after you again and again. Bang. Bang. Bang. Until he sends your van skidding off the road.”

  “Maybe he had a bad temper,” Gulliver said. “Road rage doesn’t always make sense.”

  “So this guy steals a van. He rams you with it. Not once. Three times. Then he pulls off the road a few miles east of you and lights the stolen van on fire. Doesn’t work for me. What did he do, walk home?”

  “Like I said, Detective Cohen, you’ll have to ask him.”

  “You know what I think, Mr. Dowd?”

  “No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “I don’t think this is a case of road rage at all,” Cohen said. “For one thing, the roads were almost empty that night. It was snowing. In your statement you didn’t say you cut anyone off or made a risky driving move. In fact, you say you stayed in the right lane.”

  “I had a concussion when I talked to the cop that night, Detective Cohen. I wasn’t exactly in the best shape to remember what I might have done. Maybe I did cut someone off. I don’t know.”

  “Not how I see it, Mr. Dowd. I think the guy who stole that van had only one thing in mind. To come after you. The question is, why? But there’s another question. A more interesting one.”

  “What’s that, Detective Cohen?”

  “Why are you lying to me about this?”

  “Am I lying to you?” Gullie asked. “What do I have to gain by lying to you?”

  “Another interesting question. Only you can answer that.”

  Gulliver hopped down from the chair. “I’m going now, Detective Cohen. It was nice meeting you. If you come up with anything, please let me know.”

  Cohen shook Gullie’s hand.

  “I know there’s more to this, Mr. Dowd. You know you never told us where you were coming from when your van got hit. Or where you were going.”

  “You’re right,” Gullie said, “I didn’t.”

  He didn’t feel good about lying to the detective. But he could not risk letting anyone inside the NYPD know he had meant to meet Sam on the night he was killed. Gullie wasn’t a trusting person to begin with. And now was not the time to change his ways.

  ELEVEN

  Mia had called to let him know she was on her way home. Gulliver was waiting. He was making them breakfast. Eggs on the counter. Bread slices in the toaster. Coffee brewing.

  Night shifts were tough. Even if you were used to them they were hard. There was just something about working while most of the city was asleep that added a layer of stress to it. Much of Gulliver’s work was at night. That was when he found most runaways. When he found most missing kids on the street. Hanging out. Getting high. Selling drugs. Selling themselves. He had found few runaways when the sun was up. And he knew that Mia had to deal with emergencies all night long. People and their pets. It was a toss-up whether people got more crazed about their kids or their animals. Mia said it was pets. Hands down. You weren’t even supposed to call them pets anymore. Now they were animal friends.

  Night shift or not, Gulliver liked cooking for Mia. Being there for her. He had been alone for so much of his life that just eating with Mia felt like a gift. When he heard her drop her keys outside the door, Gullie knew something was wrong. That was their signal. She would now pick up the keys. Count to ten. Open the door. Gullie had told Mia to drop her keys if she felt there was danger in the hall. If something was wrong. After Mia had been abducted by her former boss, Gulliver had taught her some tricks. He had showed her how to defend herself. He had taught her to shoot. He had put her on his payroll so he could get her a gun permit. She didn’t have one yet. So Gulliver moved quickly now. He quietly went to get his 9mm SIG Sauer. He tucked himself behind the sofa. He would have a clear shot at anyone coming through the door in front of or behind Mia.

  Gullie counted to himself. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. He raised his SIG. The door pushed open. When it did, Mia stepped in. She ran into the kitchen. Good girl, Gullie thought. Just like I taught you.

  And right behind her, a shadow filled up the empty doorway. An arm reached into the apartment. The hand at the end of it knocked on the door.

  A familiar voice called out, “Yo, Bug.”

  It was Joey Vespucci’s man, Tony.

  “Come in, Tony,” Dowd said, stepping out from behind the couch. “Come on out, Mia. It’s okay. I know this guy. He’s all right.”

  Tony stepped into the living room as Mia came out of the kitchen.

  Gullie pointed to Tony. “Mia, meet Tony. Tony, meet Mia.”

  They nodded to each other.

  “You all want some coffee?” Dowd asked.

  “I do,” Mia said.

  Tony shook his head. “Nah, I’m good. You think we could talk a minute, Dowd?”

  “Sure, Tony. Follow me. Mia, I’ll be out to have breakfast with you in a few minutes. Do me a favor. Pour me some coffee.”

  Gullie led Tony into the spare bedroom. He closed the door behind them.

  “You done good for yourself, Bug. She’s a babe.”

  “Thanks. I’ll tell her you think so. What’s up?”

  “The cops ain’t got that guy stashed like you think,” Tony said. “He’s got himself hid in a cabin up in Cobleskill. You know it?”

  “Between Albany and Cooperstown.”

  “That’s it. He and some other cops own a hunting cabin up there. Here’s the address.”

  Tony handed Gulliver a slip of paper.

  “The boss says to watch your shrunken little ass. He says he don’t got a good feelin’ about this. Me, I couldn’t care less if your freakin’ head gets blown off. But that wouldn’t make the boss happy. So watch out. The boss ain’t lasted this long by being wrong a lot.”

  “You sure you don’t want coffee or something to eat?”

  Tony looked at Dowd. Confused. “I just said I pretty much hope you get killed and you wanna feed me.”

  Gullie laughed. “Mia is teaching me to be polite. Besides, I didn’t say I wouldn’t poison your eggs.”

  “You’re funny, Bug. Remember what the boss says.”

  When Tony had gone, Gulliver made some scrambled eggs and toast. As he cooked, he told Mia how proud he was of her.

  “You handled yourself just right,” he said.

  “I saw him in the elevator, and then he got out right behind me,” she said. “I was scared, Gullie. I’m still shaking. He’s a scary-looking man.”

  “Would it make you feel better if I told you I once smacked him around?”

  She made a nervous laugh. “Why?”

  Gulliver came around the table and held Mia tightly. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

  She was crying. “I don’t think I could go through what I went through with Dr. Prentice again.”

  Dr. Prentice was Mia’s old boss. He had been smuggling rare animals into the country for huge sums of cash. When Mia found some of the cash hidden in the office, Prentice and his henchman had kidnapped her. She had been beaten. They had used her as bait to get to Dowd. Mia was going to a shrink to help her get over things. But it was slow going. She would be just fine for a month or two. Then she would have a week of nightmares. She would wake up screaming. Or Gullie would find her hiding in a closet.

  “I can’t take that again, Gullie,” she said. “Please, I—”

  “Shhh. Shhh.” He stroked her hair. “I won’t let anything like that happen to you again. You’ll have your carry permit soon. And your self-defense lessons are going well, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Come on, you.” Gullie took her by the hand. “You need some sleep.”

  When he was sure Mia was asleep, he called Detective Ralph Rigo.

  TWELVE

  Rigo drove the two and a half hours up to Coblesk
ill from Brooklyn. They didn’t talk much. Just admired the scenic views. Snow on the Catskill Mountains. The trees. The Hudson River. If you lived in New York City, it was easy to forget the rest of the state was even there. Yet just north of the city were beautiful mountain ranges. Waterfalls. Rivers. Lakes. Whole areas of pristine forest. Gullie had grown up on Long Island. But it had become almost as crowded as the city. A maze of strip malls and traffic jams. Houses built right on top of each other. He liked the drive to Cobleskill.

  As they got near the town, Rigo said, “So how did you find this address?”

  “Vespucci came through for me. I knew he would. He owed me this favor.”

  “How did you guys become friends again?”

  “I didn’t say he was my friend.”

  “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

  That was the last thing they said before they got to within a half mile of the cabin.

  “GPS says to make a right down this road here, Dowd. What’s our move?”

  “We approach in a car, Stevens is going to run,” Gullie said. “Let’s park the car and go down there on foot. I’ll walk a direct path. You circle around back. Through the woods.”

  Rigo didn’t like it. “You think he’s just gonna let you walk right in there through the front door?”

  “You let me worry about that. People don’t know what to make of me. That gets them off their game. I know how to use that. I’ve been using it all my life.”

  “And here I was thinking it was your charm and imposing figure,” Rigo said.

  They both had a laugh at that. Rigo parked the car. They got out. Gulliver nodded to Rigo to go ahead. The fat detective circled around and into the woods as they had planned. Dowd gave him a head start. It would take Rigo longer to get to the cabin. Tony’s warning rang in Dowd’s ears. The boss says to watch your shrunken little ass. Tony was right. Joey Vespucci hadn’t lasted this long without knowing a bad thing when he saw it. It was too late to go back now. And Gullie had to find out what had really happened to Sam Patrick. He took a deep breath and started out for the cabin.

  As he walked along the rutted dirt road, he thought about Sam. About Keisha. About himself. A million questions popped into his head all at once. Was he doing this to find the truth about Sam? Or was he doing this to find out about Keisha? Had Gullie’s best chance to find out about Keisha’s murder died with Sam? Had Sam’s death been a mistake? Did Gullie’s being run off the road really have anything to do with Sam’s death? Or did he want to believe it so much that he was ignoring the facts? One thing about Gulliver. He did not turn away from the truth. No matter what. No matter how hard. No matter how cruel. No matter how much it hurt. And to find the truth, he had to be true with himself. Once he spoke to Stevens, he would know.

  The skies were angry. Dark and gray. The clouds looked heavy with water. A freezing wind blew. It felt like a thousand needles hitting his cheeks. The air smelled like snow was coming. It was quiet. Too quiet. There was still some old snow on the ground. It crunched beneath Gullie’s shoes. It seemed to be the only sound in the world. Smoke rose from the chimney of the cabin. Something didn’t feel right. Gullie could not risk drawing his SIG. He might not look very scary, but a gun looks like a threat no matter who is carrying it. Even if it’s a little shrimpy guy with a handsome face. Instead, Gullie slipped his knife up his sleeve. Then, when he was about halfway down the road—bang!

  A shot rang out. It broke the silence. It echoed loudly in the woods for what felt like forever to Gullie. A door slammed.

  “Dowd! Dowd! Hurry up! Get the fuck over here!” It was Rigo.

  Gulliver hated to run. One of his legs was shorter than the other. He could hide his slight limp when he walked. Not when he ran. When he ran, his limp became a hobble. The faster he ran, the worse the hobble got. If he ran too fast, he would topple over. So he ran as fast as he dared.

  The front door of the cabin was locked. Gulliver went around back. Here, the door was standing open. He stepped inside. Slowly, carefully, he walked ahead.

  “Rigo. Where are you, Rigo?”

  “Up here, Dowd. In the second bedroom to the right of the stairs. It’s safe.”

  But even before he got to the bedroom, he knew it was bad. Gullie could smell the spent gunpowder. Smell the gunsmoke. Smell the copper-iron mist of blood in the air. He could almost taste it.

  All those odors were much stronger inside the bedroom. Rigo was there. His Smith & Wesson in his hand. His gun hand down at his side. The body of a man lay on the bed. A .357 Magnum Colt next to the body’s right hand. Blood. Hair. Bits of bone and brain were sprayed against one wall.

  “He ate his gun,” Rigo said. “I heard the shot just as I got to the back door. By the time I got up here…” Rigo shrugged his shoulders. “Too late.”

  “Stevens?”

  “Yeah, it’s him.”

  Gulliver said, “Someone is tying up loose ends. Now I know Sam was murdered.”

  “But there’s a suicide note,” Rigo said. “Over there on the night table. Says he felt too guilty over killing Sam. He couldn’t take it no more. Look for yourself.”

  Suddenly, Joey Vespucci’s warning came back into Dowd’s head. Things weren’t right. Rigo was sweating as if he had run all the way to the house. He was shaking too. There were speckles of blood on his hands and coat. Gullie looked at the blood on the wall. It was too high up. If Stevens had shot himself, he was standing when he did it. How many people shoot themselves standing up? Gullie had trouble believing Stevens would have. And how had Rigo gotten into the house? It didn’t make sense that Stevens would leave the back door open when he was hiding out. Then Gullie saw a picture on the wall. It was of a group of men standing around the body of a buck deer. They all had their hands on the antlers. One of the men was Stevens. One of them was Sam Patrick. Another was Rigo.

  Shit! It was a trap. Gulliver had been set up. Rigo had played the part of the angry partner to get close to Gulliver. To get Gullie alone. And if Gulliver got too nosy or too close to the truth, Rigo would get rid of him. It all made sense now. Gulliver was just another loose end to tie up. Rigo had keys to the place. He had let himself in. He had put the computer-printed suicide note on the nightstand. He’d killed Stevens with a drop piece. Now Rigo would kill Gulliver. Dump his body out in the woods. Or throw it into the quarry lake they had passed on the way up to the cabin. Joey Vespucci was right not to like this. It had probably been too easy for him to find out where Stevens was hiding. Now Gullie was angry at himself for not drawing his SIG. If Rigo tried something here in the bedroom, he would be a dead man.

  But Rigo said, “C’mon, let’s go outside. We’ll call it in.” He hadn’t figured out that Gulliver knew the truth.

  Gullie liked the idea of going outside. Outside, he had a fighting chance. Room to move. Places to hide. But he didn’t like that Rigo kept his Smith & Wesson in his hand. If he walked ahead of Rigo, the fat man might just shoot him in the back.

  “He killed himself, Rigo,” Gulliver said, adding a laugh. “You can holster your gun now. Stevens can’t shoot you by accident. He just did the last shooting he’s ever going to do.”

  Rigo laughed a nervous laugh. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right, Dowd.” He holstered his Smith & Wesson.

  “I’ve got to get out of here. I’m feeling kind of sick,” Gulliver lied. But it gave him an excuse to run out of the cabin as fast as he could. To get a head start on Rigo.

  Gulliver was halfway down the stairs by the time Rigo caught on. The fat man came charging after him. Gulliver was almost at the back door when he heard the shot. Bang! Wood splintered to the left of his head. Bang! Bang! Bang! The shots came in a quick burst. One after the other. But Rigo was a bad shot when he was moving. It was one thing to stick a gun in a man’s mouth and pull the trigger. Like he had done to Stevens. It was much harder to hit a moving target while he was moving too. And when that moving target was Gulliver’s size… Sometimes being small was a good thing. Gulliver could have gotten to
his SIG. The problem was, he didn’t want to kill Rigo. How would he explain killing an NYPD detective? How would he explain Stevens’s body? How would he explain any of it? He also wanted to talk to Rigo. Rigo was part of something much bigger. Something connected to Sam’s murder. To Keisha’s murder. First, he had to buy himself time.

  Once out of the cabin, Gulliver ducked into the woods. Rigo knew the area. That’s how he had gotten to the cabin so fast. But Gullie didn’t have a lot of options. He couldn’t risk staying out in the open. The woods would give him places to hide. Another good thing about the woods was that it had a built-in alarm system. Woods are covered in fallen branches. Twigs. Dried leaves. Old snow. And Rigo was a fat man. Gulliver would be able to hear if Rigo was getting close. He could wait Rigo out. Wait until it got dark. Then he could sneak out of the woods

  THIRTEEN

  Within a few minutes Gulliver had found a good hiding spot. It was a place where many trees had fallen over one another. A gap in between them that only a kid or someone like Gullie could squeeze into. Spaces between the fallen trees gave him a full view of the woods. Rigo would not be able to get close without Gullie seeing or hearing him. When he caught his breath, he texted Ahmed to get Mia. To take her to a safe location. Until this was over, he had to keep Mia out of it. Until that morning, Gulliver had not understood just how fragile Mia was. Nothing was worth risking her. Ahmed texted back that he would take care of it.

  It was quiet in the woods. As if not even the birds felt like singing. Then snow began to fall. Gulliver sat back. Relaxed. Killing time until Ahmed texted that Mia was safe. Until night began to set in many hours from now. Until he could work his way out of the woods and into town.

  But life hardly ever works the way you plan it. A shot echoed through the forest. The log above Gulliver’s head rocked. Splintered. Pieces of wood flew into the air.