“No, Gullie. I’ve made a decision.”
His heart thumped so hard he swore he could see his jacket moving on his chest. “A decision?”
“I’m moving back to Michigan. It’s too painful for me to live here anymore. I just want to go home and have a normal life.”
There, she’d said it. She’d said the one word that was like kryptonite to him. Normal. If there was one thing Gulliver Dowd could never be, it was normal. If there was one thing he could never give someone, it was a normal life. He had accepted these things about himself even before he had overcome his bitterness. Even before Keisha had been murdered. Normal wasn’t in his deck of playing cards. His deck was fifty-two jokers.
“Please, Mia, don’t,” he said, fighting back tears.
“I gave my two weeks’ notice at the clinic today. It will take some time to get all my other stuff settled, but a month from now I’ll be home in Roseville. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else, and I didn’t know when I’d see you again.”
“But I love you.”
“I love you too, Gulliver Dowd. You’re the best man I’ve ever met. I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone like you again.”
“But if we love each other—”
She cut him off. “Sometimes love’s not enough, Gullie. I guess this is one of those times.”
Then she was gone.
Gulliver looked at the bat in the plastic bag on his backseat. He half wished he hadn’t ducked. More than half.
Gulliver had the bat in his hand when he strode into the offices of Kid Finders, Inc. Stevie Flax was sitting behind his desk, smoking a cigarette. He acted as if all was good with the world and he didn’t have a care. As if he was happy to see the little man standing in front of him, baseball bat in hand.
“What you got there, Dowd?”
“What’s it look like, Stevie?”
“Baseball bat,” said Flax. “Want some coffee?”
“Sure.”
Flax went over to the coffeepot. Poured a cup for Gulliver. Gave it to him. Pointed to the milk and sugar.
“You thinking of taking up baseball, Dowd? Given that you’re such a shrimp, I suppose it’s better than basketball or football. You’ll sure walk a lot.”
“Nah, Stevie, I’m here to give it back to you,” Gulliver said. He sipped his coffee. “Jeez, this stuff is terrible.” He put the cup down.
“I know. It’s from yesterday. I save it for company I don’t like or didn’t invite over. And what’s this about giving the bat back to me? I’ve never seen it before in my life.”
“No, huh? I guess we’re going to do this the hard way. You aren’t going to like the hard way. Because as big as you are, I’m still going to kick your ass all over this office.” Gulliver smiled a cruel smile. “The best part of it is, there won’t be a thing you can do about it. And let me tell you something, Stevie.
I came in here hoping you would deny you came after me last night. You know why? I’ll tell you why. Because the woman I love told me she’s leaving me, and I’m in the mood to take that out on someone. And you just volunteered for the job.”
“Wait! Wait!” Flax yelled, putting his palms up. “I swear, I got no idea what you’re talking about. On my mother’s soul.”
“You swear, huh?”
“I swear.”
Gulliver said, “Funny, because the guy who swung this bat at me last night wears the same cheap aftershave as you do. He smells of old cigarette smoke the way you do.”
“Wasn’t me. I swear.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that. One quick way to prove it.”
“How’s that?” Flax asked, then laughed a nervous laugh.
Before Flax could blink, Gulliver had dropped the bat. A knife appeared in his misshapen hand. He was on Flax. There was a ripping sound. The sound of denim shredding. Then it was Gulliver laughing. He was laughing because Flax looked silly with his right pant leg slit open to his thigh.
“Hell of a bruise you got there, Stevie. Odd thing is, I kicked the guy who attacked me last night. Kicked him right there where that bruise of yours is,” Gulliver said, pointing at the ugly purple mark. “I bet if I looked close enough, I’d find the imprint of my boot heel in the bruise. Should I look and see?”
Flax shook his head.
“I didn’t think so. I know Joey Vespucci fired your ass. I told him to. But coming after me was stupid, Stevie. I may just have to tell Joey what you did last night. I hear his guys have a fondness for using
baseball bats. You ever see the movie
Casino
? Remember what happened to Joe Pesci and his brother?”
Flax turned white and fell back into the nearest chair. “I needed this job, Dowd. I’m broke.”
“Then maybe you should stop playing the ponies and going down to Atlantic City. Very stupid of you to try and soak a guy like Joey Vespucci. When I read your report, I could tell you were jerking him around. He would have caught on sooner or later. Getting you fired probably saved your life. How much are you into the shylocks for?”
“Thirty grand.”
“When this is over, I’ll see what I can do for you. Then maybe you can come work for me. In the meantime, go get yourself some help.”
“Whatever you say, Dowd. Whatever you say.”
But as Gulliver left Flax’s office, he knew nothing would come of it. Flax would only get deeper in debt. He’d spend the rest of his life trying to pay back the vig without ever cutting into the real debt. Some men were born to lose.
Tony met Gulliver at a diner on Coney Island Avenue. Gulliver pushed his eggs around the plate. Tony had no such trouble. He ate with gusto.
“What’s with you?” Tony asked.
“Mia’s moving back to Michigan.”
“Why?”
“Because…forget it. It’s a long story, and it involves your boss. It involves the fee you’re going to give me when I find Bella.”
“You’re an idiot. You know that, Dowd?”
Gulliver looked up from his plate. His face was red and twisted. “Am I?”
“Yeah. You are. Love don’t come around like the hands on a clock. Sometimes it only comes around once. Sometimes never. Only came once for me. After Maria, that was it. I been with plenty of women since, and I ain’t found love again. I almost thought I did, but when me and Maria had that thing all those years ago…it reminded me what love really is. Bella is a reminder of that. Of what love can produce. You had it twice. And let’s be real here, Dowd. Handsome as you are, that’s pretty lucky. You ain’t exactly a prize.”
“A booby prize maybe.”
They both laughed.
“Do whatever you got to do to keep her, Dowd. Don’t let her go home. Without love, nothing else is worth it. Nothing.”
Gulliver changed the subject. “You got that list for me?”
“Yeah, I got it.” Tony slid a piece of lined paper across the table. “So you and me going to go see these guys?”
Gulliver shook his head. “You’re half right. I’m going to see them. Just me. Like how I showed up at Joey’s that first time. No one ever sees me as a threat. I get into places you couldn’t get into with an Abrams tank.”
“Whatever you say, Dowd.”
“So did you and Ahmed talk to Mike Goodwin’s family?” Gulliver asked.
“Yeah. Dead end.”
“You sure?”
“The kid went to school and, like, fell in love with this other girl about a week into their first term. He’s only been home twice since he left for Michigan last August. Spends his holidays with the girl and her family in California. Goodwin’s folks say the girl’s dad is a Hollywood big shot and sends his private jet to bring his girl and the Goodwin kid back to Palm Springs all the time. Ahmed googled the father, and it seems the father checks out. Like I said, I think the boyfriend is a dead end.”
“Okay, I think we’ll have a better idea of things by tonight,” Gulliver said. “You and Ahmed go talk to Bella’s professors at
FIT
. Talk to her classmates. See if that gets you anywhere. If it doesn’t, go talk to everyone in her building again.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “But we already talked to everyone in her building, and didn’t you talk to the professors and staff when you went to talk to that Philipps girl?”
“No one said this was exciting work, but that’s how it’s done.”
“Okay. Whatever.”
Gulliver threw a twenty and a ten on the table. But as he hopped down off the booth cushion, Tony grabbed him by his right bicep.
“Don’t let her go, Dowd. You let Mia go, she won’t come back.” Then Tony released his grip.
Gulliver left the diner without saying another word, but he knew Tony was right.
Gulliver was exhausted by the time he’d worked his way into Flushing, Queens. Flushing began as a Dutch colony. It was best known to baseball fans as the home of the Mets, but these days its population was largely Asian. It rivaled the Chinatowns in Manhattan and in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and was also home to a huge Korean population. Without a doubt, it was home too to some of the best Asian food in all of New York City. And that was really saying something. But Gulliver wasn’t hungry. He was not here for soup dumplings or kimchi.
He was here to see Gun Park. No joke. No play on words.
According to Tony, Gun Park was the head of Gangpae in New York City. Gangpae was the South Korean Mafia. Of all the newer gangs in New York, Gangpae had the biggest conflict with the old New York mob. The trouble had to do with the transport of electronics and garments from the New Jersey docks, Newark Airport and Kennedy Airport. Along with carting and construction, the trucking of cargo had long been controlled by the Mafia. There was a time when even asking the wrong kind of question about those businesses could get a man’s leg broken. Sometimes much worse. But with the
RICO
Act, the government had badly weakened the old mob. The Mafia’s rep no longer scared new players.
If Gulliver had not believed that before, he did now. He had spent most of his day walking into the dens of the most powerful
organized-crime bosses in New York City. The storeroom of a Syrian food store on Atlantic Avenue. A Chinese teahouse on Mott Street. A Dominican bar in Washington Heights. A Bulgarian social club on Ditmars Boulevard. The reactions he got were the usual. A mixture of curious stares, annoyance and laughter. The laughter came to an end when Gulliver kicked someone’s ass. Or pulled out his
SIG
. Or his knife. But come to an end it did. After that he was treated with respect for his courage and skill.
All the gangsters he met with agreed that they had issues with the old New York mob. Some of them laughed at it, as if the Mafia were a quaint relic like a rotary phone or a
TV
set with a picture tube. None of them felt the least bit threatened by the old mob. Gulliver suspected that these guys talked braver than they really were. But he wasn’t there to argue with them. Only to find out if they were angry enough with
Joey Vespucci to grab his daughter. Most of them got pretty angry when Gulliver mentioned the possibility.
We don’t make war on the children of our enemies, they told him.
Gulliver believed them. They all offered to help in any way they could to find Bella. Gulliver believed that less. But even if he had, he wouldn’t have taken them up on the offer. It didn’t always help to have more people beating the brush. Sometimes it was better to have fewer people, who knew what they were doing. This was one of those times.
Now here he was in Flushing, but this time there were no fights. No one pulled a weapon. All Gulliver did was ask to see Mr. Park. It seemed as if they were expecting him. They might have been, for all he knew. Word spreads.
After patting Gulliver down and taking his weapons, a man in his thirties showed
him into the office at the rear of a Korean grocery store. The man who escorted him was strapped, but Gulliver doubted the man would need to use his weapon in most situations. He had the air of a serious man. A man not to be toyed with.
The rear of the store was full of magical smells. Garlic. Peppers. Vinegar and spices Gulliver did not know. Without being told, he removed his boots and left them on the threshold of the office, next to a pair of fine-quality handmade Italian loafers. The office was larger than he expected. It was beautifully decorated. The deep red carpeting alone must have cost several thousand dollars. There was an ornate wooden desk, and lovely wood paneling on the walls. Inside the office was a man about Joey Vespucci’s age. He was dressed in khakis, a beige cashmere sweater and brown socks. He was putting golf balls into a regulation golf hole cut into the carpet. Gulliver waited, not saying anything.
When the ball clanged into the dead center of the cup, Gun Park smiled ever so slightly. He hit the next ball with the same result. Again the same smile that quickly vanished. As he prepared to hit the next ball, he looked at Gulliver’s stockinged feet and nodded in approval. There was no smile.
He said, “You have had a busy day, Mr. Dowd. Can I get you something to eat or drink? Tea? A beer?”
Gulliver thought about it. He knew better than to reject an offer of hospitality from a powerful person. In many cultures, it is an insult to do so.
“A cold beer would be great. Thank you.”
“Please sit.” Park gestured to a pile of colorful silk cushions at a low table toward the rear of the large office.
He called to the man who had showed Gulliver into the room and then came to the table and sat across from Gulliver.
“You are a curious man, Mr. Dowd,” Park said. “You are a very hard man but a generous one. Koreans honor these things. Korea is a hard land, but we are a generous, caring people.”
At that moment Park’s man came in with a bottle of beer—OB Lager—and a glass. He placed them in front of Gulliver. Gulliver thanked him and nodded but didn’t touch the bottle or the glass. He knew he was being tested. With men like Park, everything was a test and everything else was about respect.
“You asked for the beer, yet you don’t touch it,” Park said. “Why so?”
“Because it would be impolite for a guest to pour his own drink.”
“I like you more and more, Mr. Dowd.” Park poured Gulliver’s beer and then gestured for him to have some.
He did, and it went down well. “May I speak frankly, Mr. Park?”