It was dark under the Boardwalk. As soon as I heard rats scurrying, I knew he hadn’t gone far. A smell hit me that was a cross between fresh seaweed and a fart that had lingered in the air about three hundred years. Little bits of light seeped through the slats overhead and a weak flashlight shone against a wall about a hundred yards away. Within a few seconds, my eyes began to trace the outline of sleeping bags and lanterns. I’d always heard people lived under here. There were boxes of cereal, pots and pans, and even a small television. And crouching behind one of the wooden beams was Nick DiGregorio.
“Anthony I’m begging you,” he said in a shaky voice. “We’ve known each other since kindergarten.”
That was certainly true, though I didn’t remember much about Nick except he was one of the boys who teased me the day after the cops came and said my real father, Mike, probably wasn’t coming back.
I took my gun and aimed it. The ocean tossed and roared and tossed some more. God’s indigestion.
I still didn’t know if I had the nerve to go through with this. But I wasn’t sure if Nicky had a gun either.
In the distance, I heard faint pops and explosions from the fireworks display.
“Come on, Anthony, let’s be men about this,” he said in a slightly stronger voice. “I know you had nothing to do with what happened to my father. I wasn’t gonna let nothing happen to you.”
He had come out from behind the beam. Even in the dim light, I could see his eyes were the same color as the oysters you found in the sand. I could even hear what was going on in Nick’s stomach from ten yards away. A noisy question mark of gas swallowed itself backwards up his intestine.
“Anthony,” he said, once more using my name as a form of supplication. “I swear on my grandmother’s life I wasn’t gonna do nothin’ to you or anybody else in your family.”
But Nick’s grandmother was with Richie, and swearing on her life didn’t mean much. We both realized it at the same time. I thought of this little prayer I used to recite sometimes when I was young before I went to bed. Please Dear Lord, make it so I am not myself living this life. Make it go quickand fast, so it’s like I am a million miles away watching it.
Nick reached into his jacket like he was about to pull out a gun. The .25 in my hand choked and spit fire at him.
The noise was lost in the last burst of fireworks overhead.
When I came out there was no one around. All I saw was a solitary seagull circling and screaming over the Boardwalk and a cloud drifting across the moon.
22
PHENOMENAL. THERE WASN’T ANOTHER smell in the world like it, Pigfucker thought. Death had its own odor. Not just the rotting, stinking corpse, but death itself. You could smell it coming up the block or going through a toll plaza. His third wife, Baby Jane the ball and chain, thought it was just the adrenaline rush of seeing dead bodies and knowing there was work to be done. But it was more than that. It was a real smell out there in the world. A smell that told you one thing was over and another was just beginning.
What was beginning tonight was the investigation into who killed Nick DiGregorio. But P.F. didn’t have much to do with that. He just stood in the weeds by the edge of the Boardwalk, watching state troopers and federal agents once again trample over any usable leads. The M.E.’s wagon was getting ready to take Nicky to the same place they’d taken his father a month before. And that German shepherd was still barking away in the back of the K-9 car.
A dozen or so black people from the neighborhood stood on the street corner, watching supervisors shout orders at each other. Beautiful. If P.F. had been working the case himself, he would’ve waded in among the spectators with a black uniformed officer and come up with three decent witnesses in five minutes. But once you had this many suits involved, nothing got done.
He watched a third assistant from the M.E.’s office come over to help hoist Nick’s body into the red Dodge van with the blacked-out windows. Ridiculous. He felt a burning sensation in his stomach and swallowed another Turns, remembering the first time he’d laid eyes on Nicky D. It had to be almost twenty years ago. He was a rookie officer then and Nick was a little kid with a John Travolta disco haircut, running to get coffee for Teddy. He couldn’t have been more than seven years old. A little kid wrestling on the floor with Teddy’s son Charlie.
The M.E.’s guys slammed the van doors on Nicky and went around the front to drive him away. P.F. hummed an old half-remembered country song.
A heavy hand fell on his shoulder and a familiar voice sounded in his ear. “Hey, buddy!”
He turned and found himself facing Wayne Sadowsky, the F.B.I. man. The pasty-faced ex-jock with the slight limp and the Southern accent.
“I was talkin’ to a friend of yours the other day.”
P.F. winced involuntarily. The idea of this bonehead conversing with an actual friend was like having him touch the food on your plate.
“What friend of mine would’ve said anything to you?”
Sadowsky looked up at the sky. His nose was mashed in like he’d had a youthful habit of chasing parked cars. “A Mr. Robert D’Errico,” he said finally. “Over at the Doubloon Casino. He said they were thinkin’ about hiring you as head of their security department.”
P.F. felt a pair of pliers grip his intestines, but tried not to react too much. “Wonderful,” he said. “And how is it he ended up talking to you?”
“He’d just been calling around to check out your references and ended up on my telephone line. Seems he’d been hearing some old story about an investigation you conducted a few years back with another friend of yours, a Detective Raymond. Seems you got called up before a grand jury because of it. At least that’s what Father D’Errico heard over at the Doubloon.”
P.F. felt the pliers’ grip tightening and turning in his stomach. “So what’d you tell him?”
“I told him I’d surely look into it,” Sadowsky drawled with a smile. “I believe that was part of a state probe into local police corruption.”
The pliers began to tug P.F.’s guts downward and he felt an uncomfortable widening in his bowels, remembering. It happened a little bit at a time. First, Paulie Raymond the detective brought him by to meet Teddy. Then it was free drinks at Teddy’s social club. And meals on the arm at Andolini’s. Soon Teddy was giving them color TVs and carpets to take home. “Sure, whatever you need, kid.” It was inevitable there’d be a phone call to ask for a favor in return. And it came in the middle of the Michael Dillon investigation. Paulie just stopped asking the right questions and P.F. didn’t have the nerve to pursue it on his own.
He’d never quite forgiven himself. Pete Farley, former altar boy and all-state hockey defenseman. He still remembered every question he’d been asked before the grand jury. It was only having a good lawyer like Burt Ryan that saved his shield back then. A breeze came in off the ocean but it wasn’t the kind of wind that cooled you off. It just blew your shirt against your skin and reminded you how much you’d been sweating.
“So what can I do for you?” he asked Sadowsky coolly.
“Well I’ll tell you, partner,” said the agent with exaggerated folksiness. “We could sure use a hand with this case we have right here.”
He looked off after the M.E.’s van following a squad car racing down New Hampshire Avenue, with lights blazing and sirens going.
“What do you have so far?” he asked Sadowsky. “I thought Nick’s grandma saw the whole thing.”
“That poor sweet lady’s in the hospital with a stroke—she won’t be IDing anybody any time soon.” Sadowsky grimaced. “You know the expression,
“No.” But it sounded hilarious with a Southern accent.
“It’s Polish, means we got jack shit. We’re gettin’ our asses kicked, and that is the sad and sorry truth of it. Why, we still don’t know who killed ol’ Larry.”
He thrust out his lower lip, and for a moment P.F. almost felt sorry for him. A big Polish kid from the South in a white-bread outfit like the F.B.I. It couldn’t be easy. But then he recalled the way Sadowsky had been squeezing his balls a minute before and his sympathy went away.
“So what am I supposed to do about it?”
