The Guilty: (P.I. Jack Marconi No. 3) Read online

  Road rage.

  I was driving on a downhill that was bordered on both sides by woods and the occasional home set inside them. At the very bottom of the hill was a traffic light which, at present, was red. I had two choices: Hit the brakes, fishtail, and take a chance on the son of a bitch smashing into me. Or I could floor it, see how badly he wanted to crawl up my ass.

  Stealing a quick, if not fleeting look at the black-haired, black mustached, and aviator sunglasses wearing man behind the wheel, I decided to go with the second choice.

  Putting pedal to the metal, I gunned it.

  19

  THE 4RUNNER HAD ALREADY seen its twentieth birthday. Technically speaking, she was an old girl. But old isn’t the word for how she ran. In celebration of her twentieth—and the fact that for a change, I had a little extra money in the bank—I had her completely overhauled. The engine was a brand new eight-cylinder, turbo-charged model outfitted with a hemi. It would give me zero-to-sixty in the time it took you to say, “Get ready. Get set. Go!” The tires were outfitted for rough terrain but could negotiate a city street like a Formula 1 circuit racing car. They were expensive at $1,500 a piece, but my girl and my life were worth it. The interior was updated with airbags and instead of shoulder-strap seatbelts, I had the option of a shoulder harness should I need one. Right now, I needed one, but I did not enjoy the luxury of pulling off onto the soft shoulder and rigging it up. I would have to take my chances as is.

  I had already hit sixty by the time I neared the traffic light. It hadn’t turned green yet and vehicles were motoring through it in both east and west directions. I glanced into the rearview and saw that the dark-haired man had removed his sunglasses as if they impeded his eyesight. His eyes were wide and full of fear. I knew the face of fear. I saw it every day in the faces of both guards and inmates when those prison gates slammed closed behind us, locking us inside the concrete and metal razor-wire cage.

  Eyes back on the road.

  The light was still red. Cars hugging the road that ran perpendicular to the one I was driving were still motoring through it. I tapped the brake to slow me down so that I could make the turn without flipping. I was driving an SUV. SUVs are easy to flip at just a fraction of the speed I was going.

  The Lexus was still on my tail. His front fender had to be separated from my back fender by only a few inches.

  The light turned green. I sped through it, leaning into a left-hand turn, the back end of the 4Runner fishtailing, the thick tires spinning, burning rubber, spitting up gravel and smoke. Until they caught and I was thrust forward, the 4Runner leaning heavily to the right side, but regaining its balance soon enough.

  I floored the pedal once more and hooked a quick right, fishtailing again, but coming right out of it, and speeding down a two-lane bypass that led back in the direction of the city.

  When I looked in the rearview, I could no longer make out the Lexus. Had the driver wiped out at the bottom of the hill? Or did he just spin out? I never had time to look. When he appeared to me again in the driver’s side-view mirror, I knew that he’d only spun out. He was gaining on me. Whoever he was, he wanted me bad.

  The speedometer approached ninety.

  Cars pulled off the road. I had no choice but to veer around the ones that didn’t. Another traffic signal was located at the very end of the bypass where the road narrowed into a basic two-way street that ended within a half-mile at yet another road that ran perpendicularly to it. That road spanned the length of a long highway bridge that rose one hundred or more feet over a major Interstate highway. Only thing I could do was try and negotiate an immediate right or left as I drove onto the bridge. I also had to make certain I did so at a speed that wouldn’t propel me over the opposite side of the bridge railing, plunging me to certain death. I could only wonder if the man driving the Lexus was aware of this.

  I blew through the red light. Then made it onto the two-way street. Through the windshield, I made out the entrance to the bridge and the metal railing that separated the road from a one-hundred foot drop. I tapped the brakes again, reducing the speed to fifty. That’s when the Lexus bumped against my tail. I stole a glance in the rearview. The man had a pistol gripped in his left hand while he tried to bump, grind, and steer with his right. His window came down and he stuck the gun out and fired.

  My back window exploded and a small bullet hole appeared in the passenger side of the windshield. The entrance to the bridge loomed largely only a few feet away. So did a red and white stop sign. But I ignored it and swung the wheel to my right while, behind me, the squeal of slammed-on brakes and locked-up tires filled my ears.

  The 4Runner bucked and fishtailed, but managed to hug the bridge road.

  But the Lexus hadn’t fared so well.

  It was going too fast to make a left or right turn. Instead, it rammed the railing, blowing a hole right through it. But it hadn’t gone all the way over. The car was balancing and teetering on its middle, the back end still resting on the bridge and the front end entirely exposed to the elements. I hit the brakes, slowed the 4Runner down to twenty MPH, and made a U-turn.

  I approached the Lexus, hoping it wouldn’t go over the side.

  Not yet.

  Not until I managed to get some answers out of the soon-to-be dead driver.

  20

  I PULLED UP TO the wobbling car, got out of the 4Runner, leaving the door open and the engine running. Thus far, no one had gone by or stopped to lend a helping hand in any way possible. But I knew they soon would. Coming from out of the near distance now, the sounds of sirens. Police sirens.

  Pulling my .45 from its shoulder holster, I made my way around to the driver’s side of the car, my heart still beating not in my throat but in my mouth. I put my hand on the Lexus door. It teetered like a school yard see-saw with a fat kid occupying one end and another fat kid on the other.

  The dark-haired guy inside went wide-eyed.

  “Make! It! Stop!” he screamed. He was still holding his gun, but he was too afraid to use it. Too paralyzed with fear even to flex a tendon on his pinky finger.

  I rapped on the door panel with the pistol barrel.

  “How’s it going in there?” I smiled.

  Behind me, I heard the sound of a tractor trailer. It sped by without stopping. The sirens, however, were getting louder with each passing second.

  “I just shit myself,” he said through the open window. “That’s how it’s fucking going.”

  I pointed to my right ear with the barrel.

  “Can’t hear you,” I said.

  “Get. Me. Out. Of. Here,” he said.

  “Who do you work for? And who sent you?”

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  I opened the door. The car lurched forward, made an ugly metal against concrete grinding sound as it slid on the chassy a few inches toward certain body-spattering doom. I stepped quickly back thinking it was going over for sure. But the teetering calmed down, and the see-saw balance game resumed. Lucky bad guy.

  I looked at the dark-haired goon. His round face was pale with fear. Hands trembling.

  First, I reached inside, pulled the gun from his hand, tossed it over the side of the bridge. Then I repeated, “Who sent you to do a shitty job of following me? Or was that just a really shitty job of trying to kill me? Was it David Sr.?”

  He didn’t answer. Maybe he’d rather go over the side than answer me.

  “Okay,” I said, “have it your way.”

  I went around to the hatchback, started rocking on it.

  He screamed.

  “Please! Please! Don’t!”

  I came back around.

  “Give me a name,” I said.

  “Robert David,” he said.

  “Robert David Sr.?” I pressed.

  To my surprise, he shook his head.

  “Junior,” he said. “The kid sent me.”

  “That so,” I said, just as the sirens got so loud I knew the cruisers were about to round the corner and drive
onto the bridge. Reaching into the car, I grabbed hold of his dark jacket and yanked him out. He fell onto the concrete road while the vehicle rocked slowly backward, then slowly forward, then back again gaining momentum. Until finally the entirety of its weight shifted to the front and it slid off the edge of the bridge, making the tumble to the highway below. I could only hope that it hit the soft shoulder of the Interstate and not the highway itself. If the latter were the case, then I could only hope the unlucky motorists saw it coming.

  I listened for a brief second or two and never heard so much as a pin drop.

  Taking a quick glance over the side, I could see why. The Lexus had plummeted onto the soft, grassy no-man’s-land that abutted the highway

  Pocketing my .45, I walked back to my ride.

  “You’re just gonna leave me here?” he said, from where he lie on his back on the bridge road shaking like a wounded doe.

  “The cops are coming,” I said. “Somebody’s got to explain this mess to them.”

  “They’ll arrest me.”

  “That would be the point, wouldn’t it?”

  I got back in the 4Runner, shifted the tranny into drive, and made a U-turn heading back toward the inner city. I hadn’t yet made it off the bridge before the first blue and white took the corner toward the scene of the accident, and one very shaken, very lucky, black-haired goon.

  21

  WHEN I PULLED UP IN front of my Sherman Street home, Blood was still standing outside, standing guard over the neighborhood like an urban sentinel. He stood stone stiff and gazed at my bullet-wounded 4Runner.

  “Who shot you up, Keep?” he said as I slipped on out.

  I told him.

  “You should have let the dude go over the edge. Now he be out on bail and back to shoot your ass again. He might not miss this time. You see what I’m saying?”

  “Crystal,” I said. Then, digging into my left-hand pocket for whatever cash I had on me, handing it to him. “You think you can manage to get your people to make the necessary repairs, as soon as time permits?”

  He looked down at the cash gripped in his hand, thumbed through it, giving it a cursory count.

  “Couple hundred bucks,” he said. “Well, that will get you in within the hour.”

  “I’ll have another two hundred for you, plus whatever the repairs cost. And a little icing for your mechanic.”

  He cocked his head, pretended to think about it for minute.

  “Deal,” he said.

  “How are things in the ‘hood?” I said, slipping the key to the 4Runner off the ring, handing it to him. “Dealers happy today?”

  Slowly, he shook his head, pursed his lips.

  “Terrible. Getting so the Sherman Streeters can’t make an honest living in a dishonest trade.”

  “Not a big market for pot and blow?”

  “There’s a market. But kids nowadays, they want bath salts, X, and heroin. We don’t sell that shit on Sherman. Coke and ecstasy is bad enough.”

  “You free tonight for a freelance project?”

  “What you got in mind?”

  I told him about Robert David Jr. and his love of coke and booze and the high life.

  “Heard about that dude,” Blood said. “Bartender up there on Lark Street. Word around town is he fucked up his girl. Tried to beat her brains in or something.”

  “Whatever he did, he didn’t do a good enough job,” I said. “Because in the end, she lived.”

  “Bet she got one hell of a story to tell.”

  “Apparently she can’t remember a thing.”

  “Or maybe she too scared to talk.”

  Blood had a point. Maybe Sarah Levy was scared. Scared to tell the truth about what happened. Scared of what Junior might do to her if she did. Standing there in the heat of the city, I knew that the sooner I got a face-to-face with the head trauma victim, the better. It was going on noon. It would probably take Blood’s people two hours to fix the 4Runner at most. I’d use that time to try and make sense of things and to do a little more in-house detecting. I would also check in with Sanders.

  “So what’s this freelance project you got in mind for me tonight?”

  “I want you to see who Junior buys his junk from. Who, where, when, and how.”

  “You want me to get some film of him in the act?”

  “If you can manage it.”

  “Can’t promise anything. But I can try. It will cost you though.”

  “I have a rich client.”

  “The best kind.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “The best kind are rich, beautiful women who are single.”

  “You ever get one of those?”

  I shook my head.

  He laughed.

  “Hang in there, Keeper. One day you find the right woman.”

  “Had one of those once,” I said. “Sort of have one again.”

  “Sort of don’t count in love and war.”

  “Just ask Sarah Levy,” I said. “Her fiancé sort of tried to kill her. Maybe.”

  “Bet he’d like to sort of try and do it again. That is . . . if he can get at her.”

  I stared into his deep dark eyes before I turned for the front door to my building. His words sent a cold chill throughout my body. I could only pray that Blood, the Sentinel of Sherman Street, wasn’t also a prophet.

  Sarah Levy Said to Be on the Mend

  By Ted Bolous, Albany Times Union Senior Food Blogger

  Your delicious food blogger just received word that Sarah Levy, while near dead only a few months ago from the injuries she suffered in the driveway of her then fiancé Robert David Jr.’s house, is recovering rather quickly. While I’m told by those who wish to remain anonymous that she still can’t recall a thing having occurred on the night of February 18th, she has asked for Mr. David Jr. by name on several occasions.

  One wonders what will happen when, and if, her memory finally does return.

  Will she spill the beans on a story entirely different from the David boys’? Or will her version fit in nicely and neatly with theirs, thereby making the $40 million lawsuit all but null and void?

  Starving and inquiring minds can only wonder.

  22

  THE FIRST THING I did when I got inside was place another call to Miller.

  “You responsible for that fucking car wreck on the bridge off the bypass?” he posed.

  “I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t somewhere within the vicinity when it occurred.”

  “Not even a full twenty-four hours on this job and you’re pressing some pretty sensitive buttons.”

  “You got the goon in custody?”

  “No reason to hold him. He claims to have lost control of his ride. He was pretty shaken up.”

  “He took a shot at me.”

  “Like with a real gun?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then why’d you let him go? I would have held onto him with your testimony and your ride as a body of evidence.”

  I told him about the goon’s piece I stupidly tossed over the bridge. Then, “It’s not time to start tossing people in the clink when the real man we want is free to sharpen his teeth and do as much coke as his nostrils can snort. The goon, or goons, will be back. This time I plan on being ready for them.”

  “Using yourself as bait to try and hook the biggie fish. Nice strategy. You get anything out of the goon? Who he works for directly?”

  “He claims to be working for Junior. But that could be bullshit.”

  “Junior? Junior can’t tie his own shoes without daddy’s help.”

  “But say Junior is willing and capable of hiring goons like him who are willing to blow my brains out? That means you, Detective Miller, have a much larger problem looming.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Should Sarah Levy suddenly regain her memory, she’s going to want to sing like a bird.”

  “Not if Junior can help it. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “Exactly.”


  “I’ll try and get a security detail to watch over her room at Valley View Rehab.”

  “Not a bad idea. If it’s okay with the APD, I’m going to take a trip out to visit her later this afternoon.”

  “Let me know how it goes.”

  “Are you asking or telling?”

  “Stupid question even for you,” he said, cutting the connection.

  23

  I WENT INTO THE kitchen and made some coffee. When it was done, I added some Crown Royale and milk to make it a Coffee Royale. I took a careful sip. That taste brought me back to my grandfather, Pasquale. When he first came to this country back in the 1920s as a teenager, he drove beer trucks between Albany and Connecticut. When prohibition came along, he drove the same trucks along the same route, only under the cover of night, the cargo no longer beer but bathtub gin. He’d been chased on more than one occasion by the Feds who were referred to as G-men at the time. He’d never been caught or shot at. There were times he swore they didn’t want to catch him. The Feds had their hands out, and rum runners paid well for the privilege of not being arrested.

  In later years, my grandfather took to more honest work as a mason contractor. He often worked downtown on the city high rises that were springing up all over the place, having been placed in charge of several crews who would plaster the many brick and block exteriors. During his lunchtime, he’d drink Coffee Royales with a local priest who often joined him for weekly visits to the whore houses down on Green Street. Simpler days. Simpler times. Far away from the digital age.