Tick Tock Read online

  It got nicer the farther he drove south. Swept sidewalks. Neat lawns. Fireflies glowing beneath leafy shade trees. After a while, it flattened out the way it does near the water, sky suddenly everywhere.

  The narrow side streets he started to pass had little guard booth arms blocking car traffic and then that was it. The road just stopped. In front of him beyond a spray-painted guardrail lay the dunes, the silvery bulge and fall of waves, the open sea.

  He made a U-turn, checking the GPS. When he was close, he spotted a closed IGA supermarket and pulled into its empty lot. Around the back of it near its loading dock, he tucked the Merc beside the beat-to-shit rusted trailer of an 18-wheeler.

  He put the top up on the convertible before he opened the bag and got changed. Once dressed, he took an electric razor from the bottom of the bag and plugged it into the cigarette lighter with an adapter he’d bought at a Radio Shack.

  Done, he clicked the razor off and checked himself in the rearview. He had a Mohawk now. He quickly slid on his aviator sunglasses and his vintage army jacket.

  He was dressed as Travis Bickle, the anti-hero from Martin Scorsese’s seventies classic movie Taxi Driver. Played by Robert DeNiro, Bickle, like Apt, was a soldier turned idealistic assassin.

  It was elaborate fantasyland stuff, but that was just the kind of whimsy Lawrence really enjoyed.

  For Detective Michael Bennett’s death, Lawrence had chosen his most beloved New York killer of all.

  The fiber-optic camera was now in the lining of his jacket. As usual, he was filming everything. The entire digital tape, including this last scene, the grand finale, would be going into a FedEx box as soon as he was done. David Berger, Lawrence’s famous, saintly, genius musician brother out in California, would receive it the day after tomorrow.

  Apt got out of the car. Sticking to the shadows, he hurried down Rockaway Point Boulevard until he got to Spring Street, Bennett’s block. He started counting addresses after he made the left. The tiny, quirky, not-very-stable-looking houses were almost on top of one another, but he could actually hear the nearby surf.

  He found himself liking the vibe of the place. As with all good beachside spots, there was something old about it, timeless. It seemed like a way station, an outpost at the end of things.

  When he came to Bennett’s place, he crossed the street and crouched in the shadow between two houses opposite and sat staring.

  All the lights were off. Was Bennett asleep, dreaming sweet dreams after a long day of failing to catch him? It was looking like it.

  He waited for almost half an hour. When he crossed the dark street, he saw that from its neatly painted porch rail an American flag was flying. Apt shook his head. Mike, Mike, he thought. Don’t you know you’re supposed to bring Old Glory in at night?

  The cluttered back deck was baffling, like a Toys “R” Us fire sale. Blow-up air mattresses, water guns, a rusty bicycle. Careful not to knock anything over, he crept up the steps and peeked in the back-door window. A Reagan-era fridge, a massive table with breakfast bowls, spoons, and folded napkins all set out for the morning. He counted at least a dozen settings. What was up?

  He was bent, scrub-picking the door lock, when he heard something behind him. The air mattress by the stairs had moved. Had the wind knocked it over? But there was no wind.

  Then something cold and hard slammed down on top of his head, and he felt his legs give out and the deck rushing toward his face.

  Chapter 100

  HIS SKULL ON FIRE and his vision blurring, Apt pulled himself up onto his knees.

  He wiped his eyes. There was a kid in front of him on the top step of the deck. He had an aluminum baseball bat on his shoulder. He was Hispanic, maybe ten or eleven, wearing Yankees pajamas.

  “Who are you?” the kid said, brandishing the bat. “I saw you come past my window. You’re a Flaherty, aren’t you? Why the hell can’t you people leave us alone?”

  Apt put up his hands as the kid feinted with the bat. He couldn’t believe it. He’d come this far and some ten- or eleven-year-old punk had taken him out? With a bat? What kind of crazy father was Bennett, anyway?

  “Wait. I’m not Flaherty,” Apt said.

  “Bull. You look crazy. What’s that? A Mohawk or something?”

  Apt stood up, holding his aching head, smiling. “I think there’s been a mix-up. Are you Mike’s kid? I work with your dad. I’m a cop, too.”

  The kid paused. Confusion eclipsed the kid’s face.

  Apt snapped his finger.

  “Sorry. I keep forgetting how crazy I look. I’m actually undercover.”

  Apt watched as the kid’s face softened, now filling with regret.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, mister. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I thought you were somebody else. Why didn’t you use the front door?”

  “That was some swing,” Apt said, stepping toward him. “Don’t tell me you bat cleanup?”

  “Uh-huh. Your head is bleeding. I’m really sorry. I’ll get my dad.”

  “Actually, could you just hold up a second first?” Apt said and then suddenly clocked him. The boy flew back and ricocheted off the deck railing before he fell flat on his face, out cold.

  Apt glanced at the kid, then at the house, thinking.

  He lifted the kid over his shoulder and went down the deck steps toward the alley and the street.

  Chapter 101

  WHEN MY CELL PHONE woke me in the dark, I rolled off the bed and stumbled around before finally fishing it out of the pocket of my pants.

  It was a 212 number, which meant Manhattan. I didn’t recognize it.

  I was still so dead to the world that when I tried to answer it, I actually hung it up instead.

  I wiped my eyes as I yawned. No wonder I was out of it. Mary Catherine and I had gotten back pretty late from the concert. If that wasn’t bad enough, MC, Seamus, and I had stayed up watching a hilarious eighties Brat Pack–era comedy called Heaven Help Us about a Catholic boys high school in 1960s Brooklyn. I shared many of the same sorts of friendships and screw-ups and absurdities at Regis, a Catholic boys school in Manhattan. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed that hard.

  The phone rang again as I was getting back into the bed. I managed to actually answer it this time.

  “Bennett.”

  “It’s three o’clock. Do you know where your children are?” a voice said.

  That sat me straight the hell up.

  “What?” I said.

  “Dad?” Ricky said a moment later. “Dad, I’m sorry.”

  At the sound of Ricky’s scared voice, I shot out of bed as if I’d been Tasered. A bunch of books and a radio flew off a shelf as I crashed my shoulder into it, blundering around in the dark.

  Was this a dream? I thought, staring at the moonlit window in shock. No. It was a nightmare. I could hear the phone being taken from Ricky.

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “You know who this is,” the voice said. “And you know what you have to do. Lawrence taught me. Now I’m going to teach you.”

  Apt!

  “Carl,” I said. “Please, Carl. I’ll do anything you want. Don’t hurt my son.”

  “Come down to the beach due east of your house, Bennett. No cops, no gun. You have three minutes before I cut his throat. Three minutes before you’ll be down on your knees, trying to get his blood out of the sand.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

  I dropped the phone, trying to think. What could I do? The son of a bitch sounded absolutely fucking insane, and he had Ricky. I pulled on my shorts, looked for a shirt, then stopped looking. There was no time.

  “Mike? What is it? What’s going on?” Mary Catherine called after me as I banged open the front door.

  I decided I couldn’t tell her. Apt had said just me. He sounded way too crazy to mess with.

  “Nothing, Mary. Go back to bed,” I hissed.

  “What do you mean nothing?” she said, coming out after me. “It’s three in the God-
loving morning! Where are you going?”

  I didn’t need this shit. Not now. She started following me. I didn’t have time to explain. How could I stop her?

  “Do I have to say it? I’m going to meet Emily, okay? Are you happy now?”

  Mary stopped dead-still on the porch steps. It killed me to hurt her like this, but I didn’t have a choice.

  “How could you?” she said very quietly as I started to run.

  “Just get back in the house!” I yelled.

  Chapter 102

  PLEASE, GOD, I said as I sprinted. Please, please, please, let my boy be okay.

  Calm, calm. I can handle this, I thought, trying to relax myself as I huffed. I could talk to Apt. Get him to release Ricky. God had given me that gift, the power to talk to folks, to calm them down, especially people who were hurt in some way. People with sick minds.

  I’d negotiate for Ricky whatever it was Apt wanted. It was what I did. I had no choice.

  Tears in my eyes, my lungs on fire, I crossed over the concrete path of the boardwalk onto the dark sand. I spotted a quarter moon out over the water. On the horizon were red lights, tiny ship lights, so far away.

  I was panicking, thinking I’d come to the wrong place. Then I spotted some movement by the lifeguard chair where Mary and I had made out.

  Oh, my God! It was them. There was a man standing next to Ricky. He had a Mohawk and was wearing an army jacket and aviator sunglasses. Not only that, but he was holding a knife to Ricky’s throat!

  I couldn’t really tell if it was Apt. He was just a crazy man. A crazy, evil man with my eleven-year-old son’s life in his hands. Ricky was actually taped to the chair, I realized. Black electrical tape crisscrossed over his arms and legs, over his neck.

  “I’m here,” I said, falling to my knees about twenty feet away. My whole body was covered in sweat. “You win, Carl. Let’s talk, okay?”

  Apt cocked his head at me, his mouth tight and angry.

  “Get up, Bennett! Get up, tough guy. Mr. Badass. Stand up like a man!” he said.

  I slowly stood. “We can work this out, Carl,” I said.

  “Oh, we’re gonna work this out, all right,” he said. “What are you waiting for, Bennett? Come and get me!”

  I stood there frozen.

  That’s when I noticed he had a baseball bat in his other hand. Ricky screamed as Apt turned and hit him in the back with it.

  “You want me? Then come and get me!” he screamed.

  I ran at him. It wasn’t a conscious decision. Some force sent me hurtling forward through the darkness, my feet flying, my toes digging, kicking back sand. Both of my feet were off the ground when I dove at him. I don’t think he expected me to reach him from so far away. I know I didn’t. I saw shock in his face before I plowed into him as hard as I could, sending the bat flying.

  Chapter 103

  WE BOTH SCRAMBLED BACK UP. I got up first and swung as hard as I could at his face. It was a good right. It felt the way it does when you’ve swung a golf club perfectly, two hundred yards pin straight down a fairway.

  It would have probably ended things right then and there, but my swing was too high, and I heard my pinkie snap as I punched him in his thick-skulled forehead. I screamed as I hit him with my broken right hand again. I made contact with his glasses and nose this time. He screamed as I felt something squish.

  I really thought I had him again, but then he was on me like some kind of wild animal, shrieking as he thumbed at my eyes and grabbed my face. His hands were like steel. He got his fingers deep into the muscles of my cheeks. It felt like he was tearing my jawbone off as he pushed me back.

  A second later, as I was about to try another swing, Apt slammed into me, and I felt something punch quickly into my right side.

  I looked down. There was a knife in me. I stared down at the steel blade, embedded through the waistband of my shorts just above my right hip, as blood began to pour out.

  Chapter 104

  I FELL TO MY KNEES in the sand again. My whole body began to tingle painfully. I felt a stinging like pins-and-needles, only sharper, like a low-level electric current was running through me.

  I had trouble thinking, trouble seeing. The surf was crashing behind me. I knelt there, afraid to touch the knife, beginning to shake as I bled.

  Before I could form even the semblance of a thought, Apt kicked me in the side of the head. He was wearing steel-toed combat boots, and I immediately went down, my skull ringing.

  “That’s all!” he screamed as he reared back and kicked me full in my unprotected balls.

  I threw up then. I was leaking from every orifice. Pain was arriving from all points at once.

  I don’t know how I got to my feet, but I did. I started running down the beach. I was the one he wanted, and I wanted him to follow me. I needed to get this fucking maniac as far away from my son as possible.

  I didn’t make it twenty feet before I was tackled from behind. I screamed. The knife had opened me up even deeper as I landed. It was in deep, the blade now scraping on bone.

  “This all you got?” Apt said, turning me over and pinning my shoulders with his knees.

  “You know what I’m going to do now?” he said. He went into his pocket and brought out something orange-tinged and gleaming.

  No. Please, no, I thought. It was a pair of brass knuckles.

  I went out when he hit me in the side of my face. When I came out of it, the bone near my eye didn’t feel right. The eye itself felt like it was hanging wrong.

  “This is what Lawrence wanted. Not for me to shoot you. Not for me to knife you, but for me to beat you to death. He wanted you to feel it, he said. What he wanted was for a hero, a truly good person, to feel what it felt like to be him, to be on the bottom, to be nothing. So don’t blame me, Bennett. Remember, I’m just the errand boy.”

  When he swung again, he broke my jaw. My face, my entire self, felt cracked, like a jigsaw puzzle being taken apart.

  Bleeding badly, almost unconscious, and barely able to breathe, I was going down heavily, like a foundering ship, when I heard it.

  “Freeze!”

  I didn’t know whose voice it was. At first I thought it might have been God’s. Then I recognized its familiar tone, its pitch, its power.

  It was the voice of authority that they’d taught us at the Police Academy. It was a cop’s voice, I realized. A sole cop’s voice crying in my wilderness, and it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.

  “Relax, relax. We’re just messing,” Apt said, raising his hands as he got off me.

  Then I heard it again.

  “Freeze!”

  But the voice was different now. Same tone of authority, but from someone else. Incredible. It was another cop! The cavalry.

  “Freeze, fucker!” called a woman a moment later.

  “You heard her. Put your hands up!” called another voice.

  “Down, down!”

  Now I heard a litany of voices, a choir. I realized they were my neighbors. Breezy Point’s Finest, a regiment of vacationing cops to the rescue.

  “On your knees, shit-ass!”

  What happened next was a blur. Apt screamed, and then there was a cracking sound. Actually several of them. Cracking and popping like firecrackers going off all around me, and I turned my face down into the sand like a fed-up ostrich and passed out.

  “Okay, okay. C’mon, c’mon. Let’s pick it up.”

  I woke up with a start, still lying facedown but staring at the blurring ground. I felt about twenty hands on me, running me across the sand. The face next to mine was Billy Ginty’s, my neighbor, an anticrime cop from Brooklyn. I saw another guy from my block, Edgar Perez, a horse cop sergeant with a disabled kid. There was a big burly son of a bitch in a Mets jersey, and I realized it was Flaherty. He was holding me as gently as a baby, his face red as he ran.

  My friends and neighbors, all of them heroes, were trying to save my life.

  We suddenly stopped somewhere. I wanted to thank
Flaherty, to apologize, but he shushed me.

  “Don’t you dare go out now,” he said. “They’re getting you a chopper. You’re going for a ride on the whirly bird, you lucky dog.”

  “Mike, Mike,” Mary Catherine said from far away.

  From somewhere close by, I could hear Ricky crying. Oh, thank you, God. He was all right.

  “Tell him it’s okay. I’m okay,” I said or attempted to. I gagged as I swallowed blood, salty and thick like metallic glue.

  “Stop, Mike. Don’t try to talk,” Mary Catherine said, next to me now.

  My cell phone started to ring.

  “I got it. I got it. It’s for me,” I gurgled as I reached for it.

  Then Mary Catherine took it out of my pocket and tossed it. My eyes fastened on it in the sand where it glowed on and off, ghostly and blue as it rang and rang and rang.

  Then I looked up at Mary Catherine. I remembered how magical she had looked that night diving into the water. I wished we could both do that now. Walk down to the beach, hand in hand, go under the waves where it was quiet and dark, quiet and peaceful down in the tumbling warmth.

  Epilogue

  Chapter 105

  I’M AT THE WINDOW in the bedroom of my apartment.

  A strange nickel-colored light fills the streets. The streets are empty. No cars, no people. The lustrous light winks off endless rows of empty windows. Off to my right beyond the buildings is the Hudson River, but I can’t see any current. Everything is as still as a painting. The curtains blow in on my face for a moment and then fall back, still, and I know time has stopped.

  I’m sitting back against the headboard of my bed, which is funny because my bed isn’t anywhere near the window, only now it is. Then I realize it’s not my current apartment on West End Avenue. It’s actually my old place, the tiny studio Maeve and I rented on a sketchy run of Riverside Drive after we got married.