The Quickie Read online

  Wow, I thought, smiling as he closed the door. I looked out at the storm-racked Hudson. Scott probably had the right idea, didn’t he? Live for the moment. Forever young. Carefree. Maybe I could get used to this.

  I glanced at my watch. Just after one. Where was I supposed to be now? In bed in some cramped Virginia Marriott.

  Sorry, Paul, I thought. But remember, you started this.

  I decided to call him and get it over with. It was as good a time as any to go through the motions. Paul liked charades, didn’t he?

  I could play at that game, too, I thought as I rolled off the bed, looking for my bag and my cell phone.

  Chapter 11

  THERE’S MY BOY, Paul thought as Scott Thayer threw open the side door of the garage. Hey there, Scotty.

  Dressed all in black and crouched in the shadows along the ivy-covered wall beside Scott’s parked motorcycle, Paul knew he wouldn’t be seen. Besides, it was raining like hell.

  Paul hefted the golf club as Scott came across the driveway and entered the dark street. Time to show this son of a bitch the error of his ways.

  Scott was ten feet away. Five.

  Then suddenly, inexplicably, horribly, there was music blaring from somewhere. From him! From Paul’s jacket pocket! His cell phone was going off!

  No! Paul thought, reaching down to silence the stupid “Tainted Love” ring tone. Why the hell hadn’t he left his cell in the car?

  He was fumbling to turn it off with his free hand when Scott Thayer crashed into him at a run. Paul’s breath left him as he was knocked backward onto the muddy ground.

  He looked up, meeting Scott’s wide eyes.

  “You!” Scott said in shock. The golf club disappeared out of Paul’s hand as Scott kick-smashed his motorcycle boot into Paul’s fingers. Then Scott lifted Paul off his feet and threw him into the air. Paul cried out as his back struck something painfully hard. It was the Ducati. He and the bike went over in a pitiful heap.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were planning on doing me some harm tonight, Mr. Stillwell,” Scott said, not even breathing heavily. He lifted the fallen club as he slowly approached.

  “Something like this could really hurt somebody,” Scott said, waving the 3 iron at him like a chiding finger. “Here, let me show you.”

  Chapter 12

  I STOOD THERE, FROZEN, my nose millimeters from the rain-streaked glass as I looked out at the private street in front of the garage.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This isn’t happening, I thought. It can’t be happening.

  Paul was here?

  And he and Scott were fighting in the street! Really going at each other.

  I’d gone to the window when I heard the crash of the motorcycle. Then I found myself immobile, unable to do anything but stand and stare at the unbelievable scene.

  Of course Paul was here, I thought, reeling. What an idiot I’d been! Scott and I hadn’t been discreet. We’d sent e-mails back and forth. I’d actually put Scott’s number in my cell phone. Paul had simply started keeping tabs.

  Guilt rattled through me. And fear.

  What had I been thinking?

  For weeks I’d tortured myself, imagining Paul with his blonde lover. Night after night, I’d envisioned them making love in their St. Regis suite. I was wallowing in the pain that only a spouse who realizes they’re being cheated on feels. Pathetic.

  But imagining was one thing.

  Doing the same thing as revenge was another.

  I’d just had a quickie for Christ’s sake!

  I watched, helpless, as Paul and Scott crashed into each other. Then the fight moved out of my line of sight, blocked by the vine-covered wall across the street. The two of them became just shadows. Violent ones that grappled and walloped and kicked at each other. What was happening now?

  I couldn’t think of what to do. Call out? Try to stop them?

  And I was only looking at the preamble. It would be even worse when the fight was over and Paul came inside. When I had to face him.

  I didn’t know how I was going to do that.

  Suddenly, there was a tremendous crack, like a well-hit baseball, and I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

  Both shadows stopped moving.

  Then one dropped. He actually bounced off the ground before he lay completely still.

  Who was hurt? Who was down? I wondered with a kind of dumbstruck curiosity. Then the scariest question of all occurred to me. One that took my breath away as it nicked through my heart like a cold razor.

  Who did I want it to be?

  Chapter 13

  FOR A HEART-PUNISHING MINUTE, everything was dead still. The shadow figures outside. My breathing. Even the rain appeared to have stopped. The silence was so absolute it seemed to ring.

  Then from out of it came a far-off thump. Then another thump. Thump, thump, thump. I thought it might be the sound of my heart amplified by terror until a silvery glow cut through the darkness.

  The unmistakable throbbing assault of cranked-up rap music reached my eardrums as a tricked-out Acura pulled onto the street and then into a driveway at the far end of the block.

  For the briefest moment, powerful xenon headlights lit the opposite side of the street, revealing the unforgettable scene in its startling entirety.

  It only took a millisecond, but that was more than enough time for the image to be burned forever into my memory.

  The standing shadow was definitely Paul. He was breathing heavily, holding Scott’s motorcycle helmet in his hand like a club.

  Scott lay at his feet, a golf club near his hand, a black halo of blood beneath his head.

  This is what happens when you cheat, a voice whispered in my ear.

  This is what you get.

  Then, at that moment, I did the most constructive thing I could think of. I dropped away from the window and hid my face in my hands.

  Scott was down, not moving.

  Because of me.

  I was still in full-body lockdown, fumbling with these new, numbing realities, when another thought occurred to me.

  Was Paul crazy enough to come after me, too?

  Overcome with the need to see where Paul was now, I went back to the window.

  What the hell?

  Parked directly behind Scott’s fallen motorcycle, in the dome of light, was Paul’s car. I watched in horror as Paul tossed Scott onto the backseat. It seemed like Scott’s head banged against the door frame, and I heard him groan.

  What did Paul think he was doing?

  Finally, I rushed down the stairs of the apartment. I couldn’t let this continue. I went through CPR procedure in my head. Mouth-to-mouth. I was almost at the door when I suddenly realized I didn’t have any clothes on. I hurried back upstairs.

  I had my T-shirt on and was fumbling with my jeans when I heard the thunk of a car door closing, and then the sound of tires spinning.

  I rushed to the window again.

  I looked out just in time to see Paul’s car speeding away.

  My chest burning, my head spinning, I had one more question for Paul as I watched the car’s red running lights disappear into the darkness.

  Where the hell are you going with Scott, Paul?

  Chapter 14

  IT TOOK ME A FULL TWO MINUTES to realize what must have happened. Two mind-and-body-numbing minutes of leaning my head against the cold, rain-streaked glass. I smiled when the sweet logic of it suddenly struck me. For the first time that night, my heart slowed slightly and approached a semi-human rate.

  Paul must have taken Scott to the hospital.

  Of course he had. Paul had come to his senses. Sure, he’d lost it for a few minutes. Who wouldn’t, catching up with the man who was sleeping with his wife? But after Scott had gone down, Paul finally snapped out of it.

  They had to be pulling up to the emergency room of the closest hospital right now.

  I called a taxi and arrived back home in Yonkers an excruciating forty minute
s later. I threw open the door and stood there, staring at the microwave clock in the silent house.

  Where was Paul? Shouldn’t he be back by now? What was happening?

  I decided Paul had taken Scott to Lawrence Hospital, about ten minutes away from Scott’s apartment. But now over an hour had passed. There was no word. Had something even more terrible happened? Maybe Paul had been arrested.

  I checked the answering machine upstairs, but other than my gynecologist’s dispatch on my failing health, it was empty. After another five minutes, spent staring at the empty street, I seriously considered giving Paul a call on his cell to see what was going on. The problem was, I didn’t know exactly how to phrase things.

  Hi, Paul? Yeah, it’s me, Lauren. How’s the guy I was screwing behind your back coming along? Is he going to be okay?

  I needed to find out what was going on firsthand, I finally decided. But waiting around like this was making me insane.

  It was time to face the music.

  I needed to go to the hospital. I grabbed my gun, tossed it in my handbag, and ran out the door.

  Chapter 15

  THANK GOD FOR ABS, I thought as I came centimeters from rear-ending with my Mini Cooper the shiny ambulance parked in front of the Lawrence Hospital ER.

  “Where’s the beating victim?” I called to the polished-looking red-haired nurse behind the Plexiglas at the triage desk.

  “Oh my God! You were beaten?” she said, spilling the People magazine out of her lap as she stood.

  I looked around the waiting room. It was empty. Stranger than that, it was clean. Calming classical music serenaded from the overhead speakers. Bronxville, Yonkers’ extremely wealthy neighbor to the east, was one of the most upscale suburbs in Westchester, I remembered. Lawrence did lacrosse injuries, the occasional Oxy overdose, a debutante who’d fallen off her horse.

  I rolled my eyes as I headed back to the parking lot.

  A bloody John Doe couldn’t have been left at Lawrence Hospital’s doorstep, I realized, because the entire Bronxville police force wasn’t here. So, where could Paul have taken Scott?

  I racked my brain for the next-nearest hospital.

  Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center, to the south on the Bronx River Parkway, I decided, as I peeled out into the wet street once again.

  Back down in the real Bronx. The one without the ville.

  After hammering it down the parkway for ten minutes, I noticed that the center-doored colonials that bookended the parkway had been replaced by less quaint, gritty tenements. Steve McQueen would have been proud of the fishtailing stop I made before I ran into the ER entrance of Our Lady of Mercy on East 233rd Street.

  I heard vociferous complaints as I cut to the head of the long triage line in the packed, grimy waiting room.

  “Have you had any anonymous beating victims in the last hour?” I yelled to the first nurse I could find.

  She replaced the bloody dish towel over the barbecue fork stuck in the hand of the Hispanic woman beside her before she looked up.

  “He’s in three,” she said, annoyed. “Who the hell are you?”

  More shouts followed me as I rushed through the open door behind her. I found number 3 and ripped back the green plastic curtain around it.

  “Ever hear a knockin’, bitch?” a near-naked black kid asked me in a malevolent tone as he attempted to cover himself with the hand not cuffed to the bed rail. A big white bandage was wrapped around his head, and a big white uniformed cop was sitting by his feet.

  I felt something shift ominously in my stomach.

  If Scott wasn’t here, I thought . . .

  Then where the hell was he? And where was Paul?

  “Yo, Earth to lady,” the Bronx uniform said to me with a snap of his fingers. “What’s up?”

  I was fumbling for a lie when I heard two loud beeps cut from the static of his radio.

  He ignored me for a moment as he turned it up. The words were too garbled for me to catch everything, but I heard something about a white male victim, along with an address.

  St. James Park. Fordham Road and Jerome Avenue.

  White male? I thought. No way. Impossible. Had to be a coincidence.

  I closed my gaping mouth as the cop directed his suspicious stare back at me.

  “So you’re saying this isn’t where I hand in my urine sample?” I said, backing away.

  Minutes later I was flooring it, heading south down the Bronx River Parkway. I’d just swing by, I told myself as I rocketed off at the Fordham Road exit. No biggie. It was almost stupid, really. Because Scott couldn’t be at some Bronx crime scene. Because he was right now at a hospital, being treated for some cuts and bruises. Minor cuts and bruises, I reminded myself.

  I rolled west up Fordham Road. I passed under a sign above a broken streetlight that proclaimed, “The Bronx Is Back.” Where had it been? I thought, staring at the steel-shuttered Spanish clothing stores interrupted by the occasional Popeye’s Fried Chicken or Taco Bell.

  I made a hard right onto Jerome Avenue.

  And slammed on the Mini’s brakes with both feet.

  Chapter 16

  I’D NEVER SEEN SO MANY NYPD cop cars in one place. They were on the sidewalk, under the elevated track, parked like a wagon train in St. James, a block-square concrete park. Every one of their blue and red and yellow lights was flying full throttle. There was so much yellow crime-scene tape, it looked like Christo had decided to do a yellow-and-black installation in the Bronx.

  Keep going, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. Some ER doctor is sewing Scott’s stitches right at this very moment. Or, who knew? Maybe Paul had already dropped him back at his place.

  Get out of this wretched place right now. You’ll get into trouble, big trouble, if you stay here.

  But I couldn’t go. I needed to be sure. I needed to act responsibly. Starting right now.

  I rolled directly toward the commotion.

  The thin, silver-haired cop directing traffic around the light show gave me a look of eye-boggled shock as I stopped my car almost on top of him.

  He was reaching for his cuffs when I opened the door and all but fell out of my car. When I went into my handbag, he changed his mind and went for his Glock instead.

  But then I took it out.

  Took out my badge.

  The gold badge I’d been given when the NYPD promoted me to detective.

  “Jesus,” the relieved-looking uniform said as he lifted the yellow tape behind him and beckoned me under.

  “Why didn’t you just say you were on The Job?”

  Chapter 17

  I’D BEEN A COP FOR SEVEN YEARS, the last year and a half as a Detective First Grade on the Bronx Homicide Task Force. Which made my co-worker Scott Thayer a cop, too. Detective Third Grade with Bronx Narcotics.

  What can I say?

  Office affairs happen in the NYPD, too.

  I dodged under the yellow tape and walked toward the blinding white floodlights the Crime Scene Unit had set up at the center of the park. Maybe it was just my frazzled state, but I was all too familiar with crime scenes and I’d never seen one quite so frantic, or one filled with so many pissed-off cops. What the hell was going on?

  I walked past rusted monkey bars and a graffiti-covered wall for handball.

  I stopped in the darkness just beyond where the lights blazed down on a fountain so old and exhaust-stained that its granite looked black.

  A blue plastic tarp around its ornate base was half floating in the water, covering something. What was under the blue tarp?

  I had a feeling it wasn’t some new artwork about to be unveiled up here in the Bronx.

  I almost jumped as a hand, large and warm, palmed the standing hairs at the back of my neck.

  “What are you doing here, Lauren?” Detective Mike Ortiz said with his ever-serene half-smile.

  Mike, my partner for the past year, was in his midforties and about as laid-back as he was large. He was constantly being mistaken for The Rock,
so I guess that made him confident enough to be laid-back, or any other way he wanted to be.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be down in Quantico, handing out, I mean, picking up, tips at the FBI Academy?” Mike asked.

  My seminar in Virginia was with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, an NYPD-sponsored brushup on the latest investigative techniques.

  “Missed my flight,” I managed to get out. “I’ll get an early one tomorrow.”

  Mike clucked his tongue as he nudged me forward into the spotlight beside the fountain. “I have a funny feeling you’re going to wish you’d made that plane,” he said.

  My partner tossed me a pair of rubber boots and gloves as we got to the fountain’s scrolled stone rim. I slowly pulled them on and then swung myself over the edge and down into the water.

  The icy rainwater went to about mid-shin.

  I kept my questionable balance and motion forward by concentrating on the glitter of the police lights inside the rain pocks. They looked like tiny fireworks, I thought as I waded closer to the tarp. Little red and blue blossoms of light. Kind of unreal, like everything else tonight.

  This was stupid, I thought with conviction as I sloshed even closer.

  Because there was a drug dealer under the tarp. Or just another junkie. People like me always ended up doing a meet-and-greet with them, just like tonight.

  Then I was finally beside the blue tarp under the hot, unforgiving glare of the portable light carts. No more delaying. I couldn’t have turned back now if I’d wanted to. Mike Ortiz was right behind me. “Do the honors, Lauren,” he said.

  I held my breath.

  And tugged the sheet away.

  Chapter 18

  JESUS GOD, HELP ME, I thought.

  My next thought was even weirder.

  When I was seven years old, I caught a men’s softball game line drive right in my chest. It was at our Bronx Irish neighborhood’s annual NYPD vs. FDNY barbecue, and it happened as I was on the Finest first-base line, cheering on my patrol sergeant dad, who was on the mound, pitching. I don’t remember the ball hitting me, don’t remember a thing about it. They said that my heart actually stopped. My father had to give me CPR until they defibrillated me. I don’t remember any light at the end of a tunnel or any sweet-faced guardian angels beckoning me heavenward. Only pain and the silently moving mouths of the adults looking down at me, seen as if through an incredibly thick piece of glass.