I nodded.
“I’ve already called Kinder.... How many?”
“Four intruders. All dead, or probably so. I haven’t checked the other three bodies but you don’t recover from what they suffered. Those ice cream trucks still out there?”
“Yes — one here on Kenneth, another back over on Lawrence. Checked them both before I came in, and they’re empty. The drivers must have been part of the house invasion crew.”
That was when I saw what I’d been waiting for: Pender’s eyes glancing over at the manila folder on the antique desk.
“Listen, why don’t you get Bettie over next door,” Pender said, “and I’ll hold the fort down here, till Kinder and backup show. This is a crime scene now.”
Bettie sensed something. She had her arm around my waist, and was plastering herself to my side. Her breath was coming slow and hard.
I said, “Joe, mind if I ask you something, before Bettie and I go next door?”
“Sure. But we should—”
“Hurry? Why? Are these stiffs going someplace beside a morgue?”
“No. But I just thought—”
“Here’s my question, Joe. You wouldn’t happen to be the guy who helped Darris out, and swept this place for bugs, would you? Like you’re the guy who suggested I move Bettie next door, so any intruders would be confused about where to go?”
Pender pretended not to see what I was getting at. Didn’t do much of a job of it, saying, “Yeah, I swept this place, and as of this morning, it was clean. Land lines, too.”
“Here’s the thing, Joe. Until those floppies were found, Bettie wasn’t a real threat. She’s someone who’s been watched for years. It hasn’t even really been a secret where she’s been hiding out. You’re even one of the ones who’ve watched her.”
“You’re talking crazy, Jack.”
I shook my head. “No. What I haven’t figured out is how deep you’re in it. How far back you go. You don’t pull off a major heist like that atomic caper without some inside help in law enforcement, and you were active back then. Hell, we knew each other — you may be the one who told the bastards who snatched Bettie that I’d be at the station house that evening.”
“Jack... you’re wrong, Jack.”
“You were also already starting your side business, of renovating buildings, right? So you may have been the guy who tipped the mob boys off that the urban legend about Big Zappo’s big old safe was for real — and that Bucky Mohler owned the building, or at least co-owned it.”
His lips were peeled back over his teeth. “I don’t even follow this. What kind of medication are you on, Jack?”
“Nothing. I’m in fine shape. The only health scare I’ve had lately is a Glock in the hand of a bent cop — a cop whose electronic surveillance only this evening, not long ago at all, overheard the discovery of those missing floppy discs. You heard it, Joe — heard that last big shoe drop.”
And now he stopped denying it. He didn’t admit anything, but his expression changed. Hardened. Still, the eyes had a sadness. I’ll give him that much — some humanity was still in there.
And, of course, the Glock swung up and aimed itself at me. And Bettie. We were standing so close, we were one damn target.
“One other question, Joe, the eternal one — why? You have a nice life down here, and it doesn’t even cost you that much. This village is a sweetheart deal for ex-cops. You got a wife who loves you, you got kids, and grandkids, too, right? Why risk it all, why shame yourself and your career, for what? Money?”
Pender sighed. Then he shrugged. “Not that easy, Jack. I’ve done business with those guys for a long, long time. And I had tastes and habits, when I was younger, that needed underwriting. Gambling. Coke. Pretty young things like your Bettie — that you can understand, surely?”
“I understand, Joe. I understand greed and drugs and sex — hell, those are three biggies in our game, right? The big motives? But let me ask you this — how are you going to explain this to Darris, and he’ll be here soon — how are you going to explain killing Bettie and me?”
He shrugged and smiled. A sad little smile, but a smile.
“Because I didn’t do it. One of those assholes downstairs did — see, this is one of their Glocks.”
And he extended his arm, pointing the weapon right at me. And Bettie.
He never saw it coming, never sensed the animal leap, the swift, sleek, graceful beast, who saved his snarling for after sinking those sharp teeth tearing into white flesh.
“Back, Tacos!” I said, and the dog, with blood on its face and head — some his own, some Pender’s — looked at me with chagrin. Had he been a bad doggie?
“Good boy,” I said. “Bettie, take him downstairs. And call Kinder right now — I don’t think Joe really did, though with the noise, Darris probably is already on his way.”
I went over to where Pender lay in a sprawl, his legs and arms going in directions that had no point, and his eyes were huge and his mouth was bubbling blood and so was his neck, from the jagged open gash, the red streaming.
“Shoo... shoo...” he was saying.
He might have been calling me “Shooter,” but I didn’t think so.
A trembling finger pointed to the Glock he’d dropped.
When he spoke, it took effort, and you had to give it to him for that, anyway. Of course it was more gurgling than anything else, but I understood.
“Shoo... shoot me,” he said.
“Why? You’ll be dead in a couple of minutes, Joe. Bleeding out from a wound like that, shouldn’t take... oh. I get it. You want me to shoot you with the Glock, and blame it on one of these bastards?”
He managed to nod, the eyes even wider, wilder. With that gash in his neck, you’d think his damn head would’ve rolled off.
“That way,” I said, “your family won’t have to suffer. You won’t die in disgrace. You went out a good guy, a hero who tried to save Bettie and me.”
One more nod and something like hope flickered in the wide eyes.
I stood. “I see where you’re coming from, Joe. Trouble is, what about all the real good guys, the cops who gave their lives to the Job, and who didn’t have mob pals and mistresses and gambling habits and a coke jones? Would be kind of a slap in the face of guys like that. Of guys like me, frankly. It’s not that I don’t want to shoot you, Joe, but...”
Hell.
He wasn’t listening anymore.
So Bettie and I shared the big rocker on my front porch and we watched — or I watched, and she heard — as Captain Darris Kinder and various other real good guys did their cop thing. And a quiet street in a retirement village was suddenly littered with death, as body bags emerged from the house, black cocoons no butterflies would ever exit.
Kinder had finally been contacted by the federal boys. They informed him that a major operation was going down at Garrison Properties. Warrants had been issued, based on info provided by NYPD sources (including a certain retired captain) and a dozen arrests would be made in the early morning hours. Later, we learned these included several high-ranking “retired” Mafiosi, and I was told, off the record, that the long missing “materiel” had at long last been recovered, too.
I pressed, and was told the atomic cube was intercepted when it was being off-loaded from a lead-lined ice cream truck onto a small cruiser at the Garrison Properties dock.
But that was later. Right now Darris Kinder was dealing with a crime scene and all I had to do was cuddle with a beautiful brunette in my lap on a rocker on the front porch.
She fell asleep for a while, after all that excitement. We weren’t going to bed, because we had to run Tacos over to the vet as soon as they opened, though right now the greyhound was sleeping peacefully at our feet, tail thumping in a dream as he chased a rabbit, metal or otherwise.