Authors: John R. Maxim
“
Stay out of this one
y
Doc.''
“
Tell me that this man is your enemy. If you can`t, there
is no decent way of
r
efusing to give him your address. ”
“
l didn't say he's my enemy. All I said . . . ”
“
‘Call him, Michael. This minute.
”
Fallon gritted his teeth. He punched out the lawyer's
home number. Doyle was shocked into silence at the sound
of his voice.
But only for a moment.
A whispered “Where the hell are you?” asked and an
swered, was followed by a blowtorch of personal abuse.
Boiling Doyle. Michael had been a thoughtless, irresponsi
ble, self-pitying son of a bitch. A full minute went by
before the lawyer ran out of the more profane modifiers
for “son of a bitch” and “little shit.” Sheila Doyle, Fal
lon assumed, must be out for the evening.
“Mr. Doyle
...
I almost got killed.”
“What you
got
was a broken wrist. You fell apart over
that?
That's how Jake and Moon raised you?”
“Have you heard from Moon?”
“You just get your sorry ass back here.”
“I'm not coming back. Now calm down and hear me
out.”
Michael told him about the muggers, one with a gun,
the other with a knife, and why he wanted no part of the
police. He mentioned the car that had almost run him
down. He agreed that it might have been nothing, but it
was one near-miss too many. He told of getting to the
point where he thought his phone had been bugged and
people were watching him. Following him.
Silence on the other end.
“Mr. Doyle?”
“Give me a minute.”
Another long silence. He had a sense that- the lawyer
was pacing.
“Mike . . . you still should have called,” he said at
last. ”I could have handled the cops for you.”
“Mr. Doyle, where's Moon?”
”I don't know. Moving around. He sent me one letter
but no return address. He doesn't even know you've
been missing.”
“Where was it postmarked?”
“Miami. But it said he's just passing through. If you're
thinking Jake's condo, I already checked.”
“Did he say when he'll be back?”
“He says one of these days. Michael . . .”
“Have you been picking up my mail? Maybe he wrote
to me too.”
”I have and he hasn't. I've paid all your bills,
incidentally.”
Fallon had assumed as much.
“You can give up the apartment. I won't be needing
it.”
“Michael . . . does anyone else know where you are?”
“No.”
“Have you used any credit cards, made any long dis
tance calls?”
“Only this one.”
“Let's keep it that way for a while. I'll see if the police
are still looking.”
“Mr. Doyle . . . have you been straight with me?”
“About what?”
“Anything. Everything.”
“You can ask me that? Jake Fallon was my best friend
in the world and I'm your fucking godfather.”
“Yeah. Look . . . forget it.”
“Forget it, my ass. Say what's on your mind.”
“Nothing. It's just . . . it's been a rough few months.”
There was more to the conversation. Much of it had to
do with going easy on the booze, not calling attention to himself, walking away from arguments. All things consid
ered, said the lawyer, maybe getting away from New York
was for the best.
“But you're still a little shit. Sheila lost ten pounds worrying.”
“Mr. Doyle . . . these things that have happened since I got fired, could Hobbs be behind them?”
“The guy's a worm, Michael. Worms call their lawyers,
they don't send hitters.”
What it was, he said, was that Michael was right the
first time. It's just the city. If his mind had not been on
Jake, on Bronwyn, on getting canned in such a crummy
way, he would have done a better job of avoiding stum
bling drunks and ducking muggers.
What eased Fallon's mind the most, and made him glad
that he'd finally placed the call, was when Doyle had
already said goodbye but added this:
“Michael, listen,” said the lawyer quietly. “If there's
anything I haven't told you, anything I'm holding back,
this would be the reason. It's just none of your god
damned business.”
“It's about Uncle Jake?”
“He had a life of his own, Michael.”
What made that reassuring, Fallon supposed, was that
the lawyer didn't have to say anything at all. He was
afraid, however, that he knew what it was. Big Jake Fallon
made
deals
with people. Big Jake Fallon
fixed
things.
Somewhere along the line, one of these deals had involved
either the financial community or the pharmaceutical in
dustry or both. He could think of no other reason that first
Jake, and then Moon, and then Brendan Doyle had been
so negative about his entering a field that combined the
two. Maybe they thought he might hear something, stum
ble across something. And it's probably why Doyle would
have liked to see him drop that suit against Lehman-Stone.
Well
...
to hell with it anyway.
To press it, he would have to go back to New York. It
just didn't seem that important anymore.
Chapter 8
For several long
minutes, Brendan Doyle stared at the telephone.
His
fingers drummed slowly against the surface of the desk. His expression was one of sorrow. Of regret. But as the rhythm of his drumbeat quickened, as fingertips gave
way to knuckles, his expression changed as well. Regret
had given way to anger.
He reached for the phone once more, but hesitated when he heard voices from the floor below. His front door had
opened and closed. Sheila had come home. The other
voice was that of Clara, their housekeeper.
Doyle reached under his desk for a black leather briefcase
and, walking softly, carried it from the room. He climbed
two carpeted flights and then a steel spiral staircase leading
to his roof. He walked to the edge, set the briefcase down, and opened it. It contained a cellular phone.
The Doyle town house was on Pierrepont Street in
Brooklyn Heights. Jake Fallon's home, now jointly owned
by Moon and Michael, was three doors down and across
the street. Doyle couldn't look at it. He kept his face
averted but he could not keep his mind from seeing it.
“Ah, Jake,” he whispered. “Damn you for your soft
heart. You should have finished this twenty-five years
ago.”
He picked up the handset of the cellular phone. It was
a Priva-Fone, virtually untappable, nor could it be picked
up by a scanner. He dialed a number. A male voice
answered.
“Marty, it's Brendan Doyle.”
Marty was Captain Martin Hennessy, Detectives, Man
hattan South. Doyle had reached him at his home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
“
I need to know about a felonious assault that happened
in January.” He recited the details as he knew them. “In
particular, I want the names and addresses of the victims
and all that is known of their assailant.”
He listened. Then,
“
No. No, this has no connection with
whomever killed Jake. First thing in the morning,
Marty? . . . Thank you
...
What?
...
No
...
Still no word from Michael.”
Doyle grimaced as he broke the connection. It had prob
ably occurred to Hennessy that Michael's apartment is
only a few blocks from the scene of the assault. But Marty
would keep that to himself. Marty and Jake go back a lot
of years.
He punched out a second number. It had several more
digits than the first. A softer male voice answered.
“Moon? It's Brendan. Michael is alive and well.”
On the other end, a hissing sound. It was like a bal
loon deflating.
“Where?” Moon asked him.
The lawyer told him. He recounted, in broad strokes,
the incident that put Michael in fear of arrest if not of his
life. Doyle told him of his call to Captain Hennessy. He
said he should know more in the morning.
“Martha's Vineyard. That's up off Cape Cod?”
“Moon . . . just leave him. Let's keep him out of this.”
“How much does he know?”
“Almost nothing.”
”I didn't raise him stupid, Mr. Doyle.”
“And he isn't. But for the moment, at least, he blames
the city for Jake and the girl.”
“So did I. Until I started remembering.”
“Hey . . . we're still not sure. Go slow, okay?”
“We
been
goin' slow. Five months now.”
“You're still healing, Moon. Give it time.”
“It's Rasmussen, Mr. Doyle. I can close my eyes and see him doing it. It's Armin Rasmussen killed Jake.”
“Moon
...
he'd be seventy-five years old now. We
don't even know he's still alive.”
“He's alive. And old men swing bats. Come down here
to Florida and you'll see. They don't run the bases so good and they can't chase down flies. But they can damned well
swing a bat.”
“Well . . . let's see what we find out from Hennessy.”
“Mr. Doyle?”
“It's Brendan, for Christ's sake.”
“I'll call you Brendan when I feel more friendly toward
you. You were supposed to look after Michael or I
wouldn't have left.”
“If you stayed, and you're right about Rasmussen, you'd be just as dead as Jake.”
Moon said nothing for a long moment. “Mr. Doyle?”
Jesus.
“Yes,
Mister
Moon.”
“You won't ever tell Michael, will you?”
“Like you said, he's not stupid. He'll have to know some of it.”
“About his mother, I mean.”
“I'd cut my tongue out first.”
The lawyer had one more call to make. He hit a memory code for the number of Villardi's Seafood Palace on Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn. The restaurant was owned by the Gi
ordano brothers. He left a message for them. Brendan
Doyle, it said, has some interesting news. Kindly join him
for lunch there tomorrow.
One floor down, Sheila was calling his name. He re
placed the handset and closed his briefcase. He would not
tell his wife that Michael is safe. Let her worry awhile
longer. If she drops a few more pounds, she might even
thank him for it.
Doyle
,
like Moon, had thought of Rasmussen the instant
he was told that a bat had been the murder weapon. Like
Moon, he had imagined that fat Kraut bastard standing
over Jake. Bat in hand. Just as Jake had stood over him
o
n that night twenty-five years ago. When Jake called him
to account for what he'd done to Michael's parents.
But Jake, in the end, let him live. Rasmussen, ruined,
broke and bleeding, had fled back to Germany. And then
he simply vanished. During the five months since Jake
was murdered, Doyle had skip-tracers here and in Europe
trying to pick up his trail. So far they'd found nothing.
On a rational level, Doyle had trouble believing that
Rasmussen had a hand in this if only because so much
time had gone by. Who would wait that long for revenge?
And, more to the point, why then go after Michael
...
if
indeed that subway thing and the mugger had been deliber
ate attempts on his life?
Still, he did wish that Jake had finished it back then. If
he had, they would all be able to believe that Michael is
right. That it's just the city. Accept it, lick your wounds,
and get on with your life.
But Moon won't accept it. And now Moon blames him
for this latest attack on Michael.
Doyle could have told him, he supposed, that he had
people tailing Michael ever since that subway thing. But
they'd managed to lose him on several occasions. The
evening when he walked home from that movie, got
jumped by those two muggers, was obviously one of
those times.
Moon would have asked, “What people? Who'd you put on him?”
He would have answered, ”I asked Julie Giordano to lend me some of his.” Plus the guy who sweeps Julie's
house for bugs. Doyle had him put a wire on Michael's
phone just to see how much Michael
did
know. And he
paid Michael's doorman to keep tabs on him and to change
the tapes twice each shift. He would not tell Moon about
that part because Moon wouldn't like the idea of bugging
Michael. He would not be much happier about the tail.
Moon would have said, “You used Giordano's people?
Those are leg-breakers,
Mister
Doyle. A leg-breaker and
a bodyguard are not the same thing.”
Well
...
we live and learn.
Not only did they lose Michael that night, they lost him
on the morning when he split for Hyannis. In fact, to hear
Michael tell it, seeing Julie Giordano's goons down in the
street and even strolling through his fucking lobby was
one of the things that made him run for his life.
So now, thought Doyle, he understands the difference.
A goon is a goon and a shadow is a shadow. But for
some things, you still need goons. With luck, by lunchtime
tomorrow, he would have another job for the Giordano
brothers.