Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (31 page)

“I don’t think so,” Ramone said, following my movement with
the barrel of his gun. My fingers brushed against glass, and I
squeezed them around the shattered neck of one of the bottles
Cancerno had broken. My opportunity would come thanks to
Cancerno, although he didn’t realize it yet. The fire wouldn’t kill
me as fast as Ramone’s shotgun would, and the initial burst of
flame might be more distracting to the shooter than to me. When
Cancerno dropped that rag to the floor, I was going to be moving
with the flames, right at Ramone’s throat, with that jagged glass in

my hand.
“I hope this hurts like hell,” Cancerno said, holding the now
burning rag high in the air, grasping it with just two fingers, and I
tensed every muscle, ready to spring forward when that rag hit the
floor. That was when I heard Draper let out a grunt that sounded
like an explosion as he suddenly lurched forward.
I am a strong man. I own a gym where many stronger men come
regularly to hoist obscene amounts of weight. During my time on
the narcotics beat, I saw men riding methamphetamine highs kick
down doors and punch through walls as if they were not even
there. Never, though, had I seen a display of raw strength comparable
to the one Scott Draper offered in that moment at the Hideaway.
With a single, swift-but-massive effort, he lunged forward
and jerked with all his power at the handcuffs that held him to the
shelves. Because Draper was so tall, they were fastened fairly high
on the cabinet, well above the central point of balance. When
Draper leaned into that savage jerk forward, the several hundred
pounds of oak shelving and liquor bottles leaned with him, overbalanced,
and fell forward.
Ramone had time to shoot. He had time, but the shelving unit
was at least eight feet tall, and it was coming down right at his
skull. He’d been focused on me because I’d been the only one with
freedom to move, and when Draper lunged forward Ramone had
to pivot to his left to bring the gun around to this new threat. By
that time the massive wooden cabinet was falling, and when
Ramone pulled the trigger, he took a full step back, trying to avoid
taking all that weight on the top of his head. The combined pivot
and step backward were enough, and the slug he fired missed us
both, splintering through the cabinet about a foot to the right of
Draper’s head as it came crashing down.
The bar saved us. The weight of the enormous cabinet would
probably have killed us both, crushed us, if it had fallen directly
onto our bodies. But because it was so tall, it landed against the
bar, shedding glass and booze all over us, and held there, wedged at
about a forty-five-degree angle.
Ramone was hidden from my sight now, but Cancerno had
screamed something and jumped backward as the cabinet fell,
throwing the rag at the same time. It caught the edge of the new
obstruction provided by the fallen shelves and dropped to the floor.
There was some alcohol there, but it missed the large pool Cancerno
had spread earlier, and the eruption of flame was smaller
than it might have been.
Staying on my hands and knees to avoid braining myself on the
shelves that lay angled over my head, I scrambled for the end of the
bar and Cancerno, bits of broken glass slicing into my flesh. I
cleared the shelves as Cancerno brought his Beretta up, and I
sprang forward, hitting him around the waist as he fired over me.
The tackle drove us both down, and he landed on his back, his head
snapping against the floor with a crack like a dropped cinder block.
By the time I lifted myself off him he was already unconscious.
Behind me the fire was spreading. I had turned back to the
flames, searching for Draper, when there was motion in the hallway
behind me and a shot was fired through the air over my head.
I ducked and grabbed Cancerno’s Beretta as another shot was
fired, this one blasting off part of the wall above me. Ramone must
have found the revolver, because these shots were clearly rounds
from a handgun and not slugs from his shotgun. I rolled onto my
left shoulder and brought the Beretta up, looking for him. A
shadow moved along the dark wall that separated the bar from the
dining room, and I fired several shots in that direction. Then the
shadow was gone, and I didn’t pursue. Draper was still pinned behind
the bar, with the fire surging closer.
Crawling back to him from the way I’d come out was impossible
now; the flames had devoured that end of the bar, the heat so intense
I could only look with a sidelong glance, holding my arm up
to shield my face. I ran around the front of the bar, switching the
gun from my right hand to my left, then put my right palm on the
surface of the bar and leaped, swinging myself over it, and onto

the floor.
Draper was pulling furiously at his handcuffs, straining away
from the fire that was now almost upon him. I ducked my head
under the angled shelves and crawled to him. It was almost impossible
to see anything now because I couldn’t keep my eyes open

against the heat.
Relying on touch instead of sight, I felt for the handcuffs. The
metal was hot when my fingers finally found it. I slid my free hand
away, pressed the barrel of Cancerno’s Beretta against the thin
central portion of the chain, and squeezed the trigger. Shards of
metal and wood flew away, and I tugged at Draper’s hands, expecting
them to come free. The cuffs held.
I put the muzzle of the gun back against the chain and fired
again, and again. I was screaming until I choked on the acrid air.
Unable to stand the heat anymore, I fell away, my hand still
wrapped around Draper’s wrist. It took me a second to realize his
wrist had come free with me.
Then we were on our feet and running out of the bar as flames
surged behind us. Draper’s knees buckled and he started to go
down, but I caught him and lifted him and then he seemed to find
his balance. Clutching on to one another, we staggered out of the
bar and into the dining room, which was also beginning to fill with
smoke. The heavy front door loomed in front of us, and I hit it
with my shoulder, but couldn’t get it to open. Draper found the
bolt with one of his bloody hands, turned it, and then we fell forward,
out of the bar, and onto the cool concrete of the front steps.
By now smoke was pouring out of the building, and windows
ruptured with a soft popping noise that sounded harmless compared
to the crackle of the flames. Draper and I scrambled out to
the sidewalk on our hands and knees, gratefully gasping in breaths
of fresh air. I tried to speak to him, but instead I fell onto my
stomach, my chin bouncing off the concrete. I twisted onto my
side on the cold, rough pavement of the sidewalk, watched the
Hideaway burn, and waited for the sirens to begin.

CHAPTER
30

Joe and I saw the press conference on the television in his hospital
room. Mike Gajovich had been relieved of duty pending a criminal
investigation, his brother jerked from command of District
Two along with him. The chief of police delivered the message
with a firm voice, but he didn’t look at the camera. The mayor
stood awkwardly next to him, trying to look grim and reassuring at

the same time.
Beside me, Joe’s breathing was shallow but steady. His face
matched the white sheets on the bed, except for his eyes, which
were red and rimmed with dark purple circles. A handful of tubes
ran from his body, and monitors hummed behind the bed, keeping
watch. He could talk, but it took a lot out of him, so we didn’t say
much. He kept his head on the pillow, but his eyes followed the
television closely. When the press conference had concluded, I
stood up and turned the television off. Joe spoke while my back

was to him.
“No Richards.” The words came out in a rattling whisper, a hell
of a lot of effort behind them, and I turned and nodded at him.
“They wouldn’t let him speak at a press conference,” I said. “Too
much risk he’d tell it like it is.”
It was the first time I’d been alone with Joe since his condition
had stabilized, and I still had trouble looking at him without feeling
awash with guilt. The first thing he’d said when he saw me was
“Thanks for the swim.”
He didn’t remember much of it. I’d talked him through it, but
there had been a dozen cops in the room for that, it seemed,
spilling out into the hallway, all of them taking notes and whispering
to one another. We’d talk about it again sometime when it was
just the two of us. But not today.
Jimmy Cancerno had died inside the Hideaway. Ramone
Tavarez had been picked up four hours after the fire, and four
hours after that he’d offered a confession to the murder of Anita
Sentalar. Jack Padgett had handled the details of the setup, and recruited
Jerome Huggins, but Ramone had fired the killing shot.
He’d been paid fifty thousand dollars for the hit by Cancerno. Ramone
said he was planning to buy an
SUV
with the cash. One
with leather seats.

Ramone would still be charged with first-degree homicide, but
his confessions carried value. He offered Padgett up for the murder
of Larry Rabold and said word of Rabold’s involvement with the
corruption task force had spread to Mike Gajovich’s brother, the
District Two commander. There was no telling exactly what the
Gajovich brothers would be charged with by the time it was all
done, but it was safe to say they’d run neither the city nor the police
department.

“If I’ve ever seen a more beat-up pair of guys, I can’t remember
the boxing match.”

Amy stepped into Joe’s room and regarded us with a frown and
raised eyebrows. I would have raised my own in response, but they
were gone. The fire had taken care of that and left mild burns
across my face, neck, and arms. I’d spent an hour in the shower trying
to lose the smell of smoke and still hadn’t succeeded.
Amy took Joe’s hand and squeezed it, smiling at him as she
studied the tubes leading from his body.
“Great to have you back with us,” she said.
“Thanks.”

You could tell he wanted to say more, but he was fading again,
the medication and the trauma beating him back into sleep even as
he tried to fight out of it. Amy kissed the back of his hand and
placed it gently back on the bed, then stepped across the room to
face me. She ran the tips of her fingers lightly over my burns.
“Make me look rugged, don’t they?” I said. “Sexy.”
“Keep on telling yourself that, soldier.”
She dropped her hand, glanced at Joe, whose eyes were closed
now, then spoke in a hard-edged whisper.
“So you want to explain why the hell you needed to call me at
five in the morning and make me drive out to see some lunatic living
in an abandoned house?”
“You told him what I asked you to?”
She nodded. “That he should tell Cal Richards everything he
told you, but leave Scott Draper out of it.”
“And he seemed agreeable?”
“Absolutely. I drove him to meet Richards. He said he didn’t want to see any other cops until he’d seen Richards.”
“Good. That’s what I told him to do.” I dropped into one of the
chairs at the foot of Joe’s bed, and Amy took the other. She leaned
forward and rested her hand on my knee.
“What happened last night, Lincoln? Three hours after I left the
hospital, you’d found Corbett, killed Cancerno, and burned down a
building. I’ve got to hear the story.”
“Hear it, or write it?”
Hear it.
So I told it. I’d had some practice—Cal Richards alone had
made me go through it a half dozen times, and he’d been the third
detective to get to me.
“And what, exactly, was with the message to Corbett?” she
asked.
I’d stolen a cop’s cell phone and called her from the bathroom as
dawn broke over the city.
“Cancerno was at the bar to kill Draper,” I said. “I was at the bar
because I thought Draper was working with Cancerno. If he ever
had been, the partnership no longer seemed to be amicable. I don’t
want to drop the hammer on Draper for those fires until I hear
why he did it.”
“Do you know what he’s told Cal Richards?”
“Draper?” I shook my head. “No, I don’t. But Cal was still asking
me about the fires this morning.”
“And what did you say?”
“Not much. Just pointed out that Cancerno was ready to burn
the Hideaway last night. Let him take it from there.”
“The story will be all over the front page tomorrow,” she said. “I only wrote some of it, but I did offer a headline suggestion for the
sidebar: 'Gradduk Not Guilty.’”
“Got a hell of a good sound to it.”
We sat quietly for a while and watched Joe. His chest rose and
fell under the blankets, his heart thumping away, smooth and
steady.
“He’s going to be okay,” Amy said.
“Yes. Dr. Crandall’s eight hours of surgery got it done.”
She kept her hand on my leg. “So it’s over.”
“Yes,” I said again. It was almost over.
Sometime that afternoon, while I talked to police and doctors
attended to my partner and Scott Draper, Ed Gradduk was buried
without ceremony, at his mother’s request.

It was late the next day before I saw Draper. He called me as soon
as he was released from the hospital and asked me to meet him
outside. I walked out of Joe’s room and down the steps, came out
into a hot, bright day with a sky so blue it seemed artificial.
Draper was standing at the corner. When I got closer, I saw his
face was a ghastly collage of bruises and stitches. There was a cast
on his nose and a bandage over his right eye. But the rest of him
looked fine, strong and sturdy.
He put out his hand. “Thanks for coming down. Now, and the

last time.”
I shook his hand. “Thanks for pulling me out of the house fire a
few nights ago. Too bad you didn’t stick around at the time. Maybe
some things would have gone a little easier on a lot of people.”
“Let’s take a walk,” he said.
We walked north on West Twenty-fifth, the cars buzzing past
us. It was late in the afternoon, the heat as intense as it would get
all day, and after only a block of it I could feel my pores begin to
open up. The storm that had cooled things off was forgotten now,
the sky clear, the air still. The heat would continue to build till the
next storm blew through. August in Cleveland.
“Cops cut me loose,” Draper said eventually. “A lot of questions
first, sure, but at the end of the day it seems I’m just a victim to
them. They seem to think Cancerno was punishing me for helping
you, and I didn’t discourage that line of logic. Problem is, I know
it’s not the truth, and you know it’s not the truth. Corbett came by
to see me in the hospital. Told me what he told you.”
I walked on without saying a word, head down.
“So you know Cancerno came after me because he found out I
set those fires,” Draper said.
“I got that impression. But how did he know?”
“One of his guys was in my bar that night. I came in through
the back, went into the bathroom, and was running water over my
arms. I had some burns. Smelled of smoke. I should have gone
home, but there were so many cops out that I just wanted to get off
the streets for a while. This guy walked in the bathroom and saw
it. I guess he reported back to Cancerno the next afternoon, once
he heard whose houses had been lit.”
“How’d you know which houses to burn?”
“Not too hard—all the ones they were working on had signs in
the yard. I drove around the neighborhood and found a half dozen
without much trouble.”
see.