The Boardwalk Read online

  They sped away from Gold’s office. Down Yellowstone Boulevard and past the 112th Precinct. They spotted two squad cars racing in the other direction.

  “Well,” Gullie said, “it won’t take them long to get there.”

  “Was he murdered or was it, like, a heart attack or something?” Ahmed asked.

  “Strangled.”

  “Find anything?”

  Gullie shook his head in disgust. “Nothing I can use as evidence. Nothing that will prove anything to anybody. Just that I know the lawyer was preparing a package for me. Maybe Sam was going to give it to me. Maybe the lawyer. But I don’t have it. And I still don’t know what the secret is.”

  “But you got something else bugging you, little man. I can tell.”

  “One question keeps going around and around in my head. It’s like at night when a mosquito keeps buzzing by your ear. You swat at it, but it won’t go away. Keeps coming back every few seconds.”

  “What’s the question? Maybe I can help,” Ahmed offered.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s that same old question. Why now? Why did this all happen now? Why did Sam pick that day to tell me? I still feel like if I can just find out why he picked that day…I don’t know. Maybe if I know why, I can figure out what the secret is.”

  Ahmed nodded. “Maybe it’s something stupid like in the movies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like when a guy says, ‘If you kill me, my lawyer will deliver proof to the cops,’” said Ahmed. “You know, some shit like that.”

  “Doesn’t usually work that way.”

  “I’m just saying is all.”

  “Right now it’s the best idea we’ve got. It’s the only idea we’ve got. Too bad life isn’t like the movies.”

  Gulliver dialed Mary to tell her about the dead lawyer.

  SEVENTEEN

  The interior of the church was a sea of blue uniforms. Cop funerals are always a big deal in New York City. They are an even bigger deal when the cop is killed in the line of duty. There were cops from all over the northeast. From all over the country. Some from Canada too. Gulliver didn’t like that Mia wasn’t there with him. That he would have to lie about why. But he had to protect her. He felt like things were getting more dangerous. Not safer. He made his way through the crowd to Mary. He nodded for her to come have a chat with him for a second. She stood right up.

  “You should be able to clear the will up now that they found the lawyer’s body,” Gullie said.

  “Do you really think his murder is connected to—”

  Gullie shushed her. “Don’t say it. But yes. It’s one hundred percent connected. And it’s connected to me somehow. I don’t know how yet.”

  “You’ll find out. I know you will. Sam once told me he thought you were a better detective than all the guys he worked with.”

  “Yeah, but they’re taller. I would trade for that in a second.”

  That made Mary smile. But Gulliver was serious. He would have traded. But he wasn’t going to rob Mary of that smile. She had been robbed of too much already.

  “You were married when Sam worked in the Seven-Five, right?” Gulliver asked.

  “When we bought our house. Bought our boat. Put the down payment on our place in Florida. We were strong then. Really in love. Then things changed.”

  Mary broke down as she looked over at Sam’s coffin. Gullie comforted her. It wasn’t the time to ask her more questions. He waded in among the cops. Listening for any rumors floating around. Listening to hear if the upstate cops had found the bodies of Stevens and Rigo.

  That was another plus of Gulliver’s size. People sometimes didn’t notice he was there. Even if they did, they often didn’t care. People said stuff in front of Gulliver that they would never have said in front of a normal-size man. People tended to think his size meant that he was stupid. Or deaf. Or childlike. He was none of those things.

  They hadn’t found the bodies yet. Gulliver knew that because he had overheard some guys from the Seven-Six bitching about Rigo. What an asshole. His partner gets killed and he don’t even show up at the funeral. Gulliver moved on. Then there was quiet in the crowd because the ceremony was about to start. Gullie got a good seat, two rows behind the mayor. Gulliver sat right next to an NYPD big shot from the brass. The guy had lots of shiny metal and stripes and ribbons on his uniform. But Gullie didn’t know him. The funeral went the way these things went. There was a lot of praying. A lot of crying. A lot of speeches. Too many speeches. Gulliver wondered how getting shot by accident made Sam a hero.

  Then the world changed when the big-brass cop leaned over to the guy next to him. That man was in a dark gray suit. He had a shock of white hair on his head. Gullie knew him. He was in the papers and on TV all the time. His name was Jack O’Connell. He was once a famous detective. Now he was the head of the detectives’ union.

  The big-shot cop whispered to O’Connell. It was just loud enough for Gullie to hear too. “Sam Patrick, bless his soul, the poor damned bastard.”

  “How’s that?” O’Connell wanted to know.

  “Haven’t you seen the medical examiner’s report?” the big shot asked.

  “No. Why should I? I run a union. Wasn’t Patrick shot to death by that ass Stevens?”

  “True,” the big-shot cop said. “But bullet or no bullet, he had no more than a few months to live anyway.”

  “Explain yourself,” O’Connell said.

  “Cancer, Jack. Sam Patrick’s body was riddled with it. Pancreas. Lungs. Liver. He was a goner. Then that fool Stevens…Ah, maybe he did Sam a favor. Saved him a lot of suffering.”

  Gulliver could barely breathe. He had his answer. That’s why Sam had decided to tell him about Keisha. He was dying. He wanted to get it off his chest. All bets were off. The secret was no longer safe with him. He had nothing to lose. Threats and money lose their power over a dying man. Men with nothing to lose can’t be trusted. Somehow, the others had found out about Sam’s illness. When they did, they began keeping an eye on him. When Sam went to see Arnie Gold, he sealed his own fate. His lawyer’s fate too. And if Gulliver Dowd wasn’t such a good driver, he would have been dead as well.

  There was someone he had to go see. A doctor.

  EIGHTEEN

  Tracking down Sam’s doctor was easy enough for a PI like Gulliver Dowd. Not because he was a great detective. Nothing like that. It was because Gullie used the same doctor as Sam Patrick. Sam had sent him to Dr. Gupta when Gulliver had a bad sinus infection. His office was only a few hundred yards from the Seven-Six. A lot of the cops there used him.

  Rajiv Gupta was a happy-faced man with a big white smile. He had mocha-colored skin. Intense brown eyes. And those eyes lit up at the sight of Gulliver Dowd walking into his office. The light in them dimmed when they saw Ahmed Foster walk in behind Gullie.

  “Mr. Gulliver. How are you, sir?” asked the doctor in his lilting voice. He offered his right hand.

  Gulliver shook it.

  “Hello, Doc.” He did not introduce Ahmed.

  Ahmed just stared at the doctor.

  “My nurse tells me you are not ill. So what can I do for you and your friend?”

  “Ahmed isn’t my friend. He kind of watches my back. He’s an ex–Navy Seal. He has a nasty habit of breaking things.”

  “Yes, well…” The doctor was nervous. That was exactly what Gullie wanted.

  Gulliver asked, “Did you know that Sam Patrick’s funeral was earlier today?”

  Gupta shook his head. “Terrible. Terrible about Sam. He was a nice man. It was a pity what happened to him.”

  “Maybe not,” Gulliver said. “I hear he was going to face a lot of pain. A lot of suffering.”

  Gupta’s eyes got wide with fear. “How can you know that?”

  “About Sam’s cancer? About how it had spread? Let’s say I overheard it.”

  “But he made me promise to tell no one,” the doctor said. “He said he wasn’t going to tell anyone of his fate.”
/>   Gulliver’s voice grew cold. “Let’s you and me stop worrying about what I know. About how I know it. Let’s talk about who else knew. About how they knew it.”

  Gupta’s hands began to shake. He looked at Ahmed. Ahmed looked back without blinking.

  “I don’t understand,” said the doctor.

  “Yes, you do, Doc. But we’ll get to that in a minute. First I want to know why Sam was coming to a local doctor about cancer.”

  “Oh, I sent him to the best specialists at Sloan Kettering. But it was all rather hopeless. He had waited too long to come to me with his symptoms. And by the time I sent him to Sloan Kettering…it was much, much too late. After that, Sam asked that I handle his pain medication. He didn’t want to go to Sloan Kettering any longer if there was no hope. I am so sorry. I liked Sam very much.”

  “Then why did you sell him out, Doc?” Gullie asked. “You were updating someone about Sam’s health. Weren’t you?”

  Tears ran down Gupta’s brown cheeks. “I had no choice, Mr. Gulliver. They made threats against my family. They showed me video of my children being taken to and coming home from their schools. They threatened the life of my wife. What would you have done in such a case?”

  “I’m not here to get you into trouble, Doc. But I want all the truth.”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Gulliver. I have felt great guilt over this. I will do whatever you ask.”

  “Tell me how they approached you,” Gullie said.

  “One day as I was leaving my office, a man came up to me in the street by my car. He was a scary man. Not so tall as your Mr. Ahmed. But he was thick in the chest and arms. He seemed almost to have no neck. He spoke roughly to me. He said he wanted me to tell him about Sam’s illness. That I was to call him after each of Sam’s visits. Then he showed me video of my children. Photos of my wife’s movements near our home. When I said that I could not do this, he showed me his gun. He stuck it in my belly. He said, Killing you will be as easy as breathing for me. He said that he would do terrible things to my wife and children.”

  “So you gave this man updates?”

  Gupta bowed his head in shame. “I did. I did not feel I had a choice.”

  “Okay, Doc, I can see that. You have to protect the people you love no matter what.”

  “Still, I feel guilt. I have caused the death of Detective Sam.”

  “No, Doc. I have a feeling Sam did that to himself. He did something many years ago that began a slow march to his murder.”

  “What did Detective Sam do?”

  “That I can’t answer yet,” Gulliver said. “Did Sam come to see you on the day he was killed?”

  “Yes. He was beginning to get very, very sick. The pain medication was not working so well. His vital signs were getting very weak.”

  “He was dying?”

  “He would not have lasted very much longer, Mr. Gulliver. A month. A week. Days. I cannot say. But he knew it was bad.”

  “And you told this to the man who wanted updates?”

  “Right after Detective Sam left my office,” said Gupta.

  “Do you have a phone number for this man?”

  Gupta did not answer. Instead, he pulled a slip of paper from a drawer. He handed it to Gulliver.

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  Gulliver turned to go.

  “Will my family be in danger?” Gupta called after him.

  “I don’t think so,” Gullie said. “And Doc…”

  “Yes, Mr. Gulliver?”

  “I’ll be finding a new doctor to look after me.”

  Dr. Gupta did not say another word.

  Outside, Gulliver dialed the number Gupta had given him. A man picked up after two rings.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “What is it?”

  Gulliver knew the voice. The man had stood in Gulliver’s apartment only a few days earlier.

  The man on the other end grew impatient. “What is it? Who the fuck is this?”

  “It’s me, Tony, Gulliver Dowd. Tell your boss to give me a call.”

  “How the fuck did you get this number, Bug?”

  “Just tell your boss I’ll be waiting for his call.”

  Gullie hung up. He went home to wait.

  NINETEEN

  The parachute jump rose twenty-five stories into the night sky. It was like a big skeleton of steel. Bones with no meat. The top of it always reminded Gulliver Dowd of an umbrella with its fabric torn away. That night most of its upper half was swallowed up by clouds. The ocean was loud. Louder than normal, Gulliver thought. The winds off the water were cold. No one else seemed to be on the boardwalk for miles in either direction. Gulliver was used to feeling alone in the world. He tried to remember if he had ever felt quite this alone before. He knew he was risking his life. But sometimes a man just has to know things. He has to know them no matter what the cost. Dowd heard footsteps on the wooden planks behind him.

  “Hello, little man.” It was Joey Vespucci.

  “Hello, Joey. You alone?”

  “Didn’t I promise you I would be on the phone?”

  “You can’t blame me for asking,” Gulliver said. “A lot of people have been killed. Some by their friends and partners in this mess.”

  “I guess that’s fair. Yeah, Dowd, I’m alone.”

  “Why are we here, Joey? Why didn’t you just have me killed like all the others?”

  “None of the killing was my idea. That’s right. Even I have bosses. Everybody’s got someone above them. It may not look that way on TV. But believe me, this isn’t about me. It’s not about you.”

  Gullie shook his head. “When it involves my murdered sister, when it involves a murdered friend, it involves me.”

  “Come over by the rail with me. I like looking out at the ocean,” Joey said. “Even on a night like this.”

  They walked over to the guardrail. Joey leaned down. He rested his chin on his folded arms.

  “You would be dead a hundred times over by now if I wanted you dead. I stuck my neck out for you so that you’re not dead. My bosses wanted you dead. It would’ve made things easier all around. If you remember, Tony passed a warning on from me. You ever stop to think why you weren’t killed up in the woods there in Cobleskill? You know, after the sniper plugged that fat fuck Rigo, he had you in his sights. But he had orders to leave you be. Orders from me.”

  “I guess this is where I say thanks,” Gullie said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  “I can’t do that, Dowd.”

  “Even though my sister was murdered. Even though many other people have died. You’re not going to tell me.”

  “That’s up to you, little man,” Joey said. “You’ve got a big choice to make tonight. The biggest kind of choice a man has to make.”

  Gullie was confused. “How’s that?”

  Joey reached into his coat. When Joey did that, Gulliver was tempted to shoot the mob boss. Or stab him. Or disable him with a kick. Instead, Gullie did nothing. Though Joey was a murderer, he had always kept his word to Dowd. When Joey showed Gulliver his hand, he was not holding a gun. Instead, he held a thick brown envelope out in front of him. The envelope was addressed to Gulliver.

  “What’s that?” Dowd asked.

  “This is the envelope Sam Patrick was going to have his lawyer give you when he died. It’s got everything in it that you wanna know. Why your sister was killed and all of that. All your questions will be answered,” Joey said. “It’s yours if you want it.”

  “Of course I want it, Joey.”

  “Maybe not, Dowd. Maybe you should listen to me first,” Joey said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “If you take the package, you’ll have your answers. But you and your pretty girl-friend will be dead by the end of the week. Not many days left in the week. And my bosses say it won’t be an easy death for either of you.”

  “And if I don’t take the envelope?” Gullie said.

  �
�You don’t take it. You promise to stop nosing around about it. That’s that. It’s over. Forgotten. We put a match to this envelope. We move on. You. Me. My bosses. You have my word. So that’s your choice, little man. You can die knowing about your sister or you can save your girlfriend’s life. Not both.”

  “Do you know why Keisha was killed, Joey?”

  “No. And I don’t wanna know.”

  “Do you know who killed her?”

  Joey hesitated. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Can you tell me that much?” Gulliver was almost begging. “Can you please tell me that?”

  “Dowd, I know you probably hate my guts right about now. I would hate me too. But I like you. I respect you. Take my advice. Please just leave it alone for your own good. Some things you don’t wanna know.”

  “Who killed her, Joey? Please tell me.”

  “The guy who killed her is dead, little man. He got what he deserved this week. Leave it there. For your own sake.”

  “Stevens? Rigo? Which one of those bastards killed my sister?”

  “Please, Dowd. Please don’t ask. You won’t like the answer.”

  “Stevens? Rigo?” Gulliver repeated. “Which one?”

  “Neither. It was your buddy, Sam Patrick. He killed her. See? I told you you wouldn’t like the answer.”

  Gulliver felt like he had been kicked in the stomach. He didn’t want to believe Joey. But Gulliver knew Joey was telling the truth.

  “I told you not to ask, little man.”

  “You did.”

  “So what’s it gonna be?” Joey asked.

  “You got a match?”

  “Better. Here’s my lighter. I had it since I was a little punk.” Joey Vespucci handed Gulliver his old Zippo.

  Gulliver took the lighter. He took the envelope from Joey. He set the envelope on fire. When it was in flames, when he could not hold it any longer, he threw it onto the sand. They watched it burn. They watched the ashes fly away in the wind like ghosts in black shrouds.