“I’m riding with you on the boat,” Mercer called out. “Why don’t you let Jimmy go back with the two kids on the ranger’s vessel? We can have Major Case meet them at the Chelsea Piers docks and take them for questioning, if that’s what you want. Jimmy can get work started on the cell phones and take the backpack and sheet to the lab. Figure out whether this is all a Chapman red herring or actual evidence of a crime.”
I didn’t want to let Lonigan out of my hands, but I didn’t have much reason to keep him.
I shut the lid on the head again. “That would mean too many cooks in the kitchen. Telling Major Case means Scully will find out before too long.”
“Look, Mike,” Mercer said. “Ray Peterson can’t run this whole thing himself.”
“He’s with me so far.”
“Get Lonigan off that boat and let’s head for the other dock.”
I was about to swing myself up on the gunwale again when the phone in my pocket rang.
“Mike,” the lieutenant said. “Are you sitting down?”
“Ready for whatever you’ve got.”
“The old man, Mugsy Renner, he’s still alive.”
“What?” I said. I could feel fire rising inside my gut. “He must be eighty-six.”
“Eighty-eight and dying of lung cancer,” Peterson said.
“What prison?” I asked. “We can race someone up there to talk to him.”
“That’s just it. Six life sentences with no chance of parole, but two weeks ago Renner was granted a release.”
“A what?” I screamed into the phone. “You run a mob of hoodlums, kill a few dozen people yourself, get nailed rock solid for six homicides, and some parole board decides twenty years later to override the trial judge who heard the grisly details and go lenient?”
“Calm down, Mike,” Peterson said. “They call it-”
“I don’t give a damn what they call it.”
“They call it a compassionate discharge. Truth is, the warden told me, the state can’t afford the medical treatment for the aging prison population.”
I was off the boat and headed toward Mercer. I couldn’t control my rage.
“Then let out the old men with terminal toe fungus who stole cars or robbed banks. Let out the thieves and the con men with psoriasis, not the murderers. Who cares if that bastard died in a jail cell?”
Mercer was jogging toward me.
“Where is he?” I asked Peterson. The wind had picked up as the sun lowered itself to the west. It carried my voice downriver with it.
“That’s the thing, Mike. He’s back in the city.”
“Woodside, Queens, no doubt. Where all the old Westies go to die.”
“You don’t have to know where he is, okay? I’ll handle that conversation myself, I promise you that.”
“I need to know, Loo. The last thing you can do is hold out on me.”
“You’ve got to keep your head together, Mike,” Peterson said. “I got through to the feds, too. About Emmet Renner.”
“What did you find out? They’ve got a new leniency program in Witness Protection, too?”
“He’s got a two-week pass from the program. They let him come home from Arizona to say good-bye to his old man.”
“One more Westie and I win the trifecta,” I said. “Where are they, Loo?”
“Be sensible, Mike. That’s not a job for you. You’re not even going to recognize Emmet Renner, thirty years after the fact and enough plastic surgery so nobody who ever knew him can make him,” Peterson said. “You see him on the street today? You’d walk right past him.”
“I’ll figure this out without you, understand? There was Emmet, the oldest son, and Charlie,” I said, thinking of the kid my father shot, “and then there were three girls in between. One of them must have taken the father in when Correction let him go. If you don’t tell me the names, I’m sure my mother will remember.”
“I’m done with your threats, Mike. I’m taking two men from the squad and going out to Queens myself.”
“I’m sorry for breaking balls, Loo. And yours, most of all. But Parole must have given you an address, right? They couldn’t let him out without accounting for his whereabouts.”
“I know his whereabouts better than I know yours,” Peterson said. “Enough playing games with me, Mike. You’re officially off this investigation as of right now. I should have done this hours ago. Give the phone to Wallace.”
“You have an address, right? You’re not driving blind, are you?”
“The man’s in a hospital, okay? He’s on life support. Yeah, he was released to his daughter’s home,” Peterson said. “But he’s in a hospital now. He’s in a hospital and his daughter’s got the health-care proxy. Shauna Renner decides when to pull the plug.”
“Shauna what?”
“Shauna Renner,” he said. “The oldest sister.”
“Do what you gotta do, Loo. I’m off duty,” I said, ending the call.
I jumped on the gunwale of the Intrepid and kicked the side of the bench where I had stowed my prisoner away.
“She’s Shauna Lonigan now,” I yelled to no one in particular. “And the snatch of Alex Cooper is about Renner’s revenge.”
FORTY-FOUR
“Coop’s life is on the line because of me,” I said.
“And you expect me to believe you’re going off duty?”
“Peterson swears he’s taking Renner down himself. What choice does it leave me?”
“Let’s give it a rest and we can come back fresh tomorrow.”
“Totally,” I said.
It was hard to look Mercer in the eye and lie to him, but going rogue was not in his playbook.
“Let’s just talk to these two jerks again, before we go back,” I said.
“What did Peterson give you?” Mercer asked.
“Cormac Lonigan’s uncle is Emmet Renner, and he’s somewhere in the middle of a two-week pass to pray at his father’s bedside,” I said. “Praying hard to find out where Mugsy buried all the money he stole before he got sent away.”
Mercer held up his hand to Jimmy to signal an ask for five minutes more. He stepped onto the boat with me and lifted the lid of the bench.
Cormac Lonigan picked up his head.
“Time to catch up on family ties, Cormac,” I said. “Sorry to hear about your grandfather.”
“Fuck you, Chapman. He’d say the same thing if he was here.”
“I know where he is, kid,” I said, pulling him to his feet. “Only I don’t think he’s going to be there much longer, so we have to step up planning for the reunion.”
“My witness,” Mercer said to me, pushing me out of the way. I climbed back onto the deck of the boat.
The kid’s eyes widened and he came close to freaking out just looking at the size of Mercer’s hands. He had no way to know how much gentler the man was than I.
“Where’s Alex Cooper?”
“Who?”
He was thin and wiry, but I was certain that belied the toughness of his Renner roots.
“The woman,” Mercer said. “The woman your uncle Emmet is holding.”
Lonigan’s lips were as thin as his long fingers. They were locked together in silence.
“You’ve got a chance to help yourself here,” Mercer said. “Where’s Emmet Renner?”
“Why don’t you ask your partner where Charlie Renner is?” Lonigan said. “He’d be alive if it wasn’t for a cop named Chapman.”
I held my tongue.
“Talk to me,” Mercer said. “Talk to me if you want to go home tonight.”
“You ain’t got shit.”
“Maybe you don’t watch enough cop shows, Cormac,” Mercer said. “Trace evidence, it’s called. That sheet you went back into the fort to get? There’ll be DNA in the sweat that’s on it, and skin cells that come off just from rubbing against it. The plastic handcuff, too.”
“Come back when you can prove it.”
Mercer asked him four more questions, but he refused to answer any of them.