Storm Rising Page 3

  “Yes, Garrett, I missed that.”

  “Well, listen, I’ve got a space for you and I want you to come.”

  “I thought principals weren’t allowed to do any recruiting.”

  “We’re not. But the mayor owed me. He had a word with Central Office.”

  “The old politics thing again.”

  “It’s Bayonne, Lucy. If you can’t change it, use it. Come back and work with me at a great new school!”

  “Garrett, I have a son. I’m a single mom. I can’t just—!”

  “Yeah, I remember you were pregnant. Listen, we can help you work around that. We have pre-K in the school, and daycare facilities nearby.”

  “I still own the house down at the Point. If I remember correctly, kids have to go to the school in the district where they live.”

  “Lucy…”

  “You fixed that as well?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “You presumed a lot, Garrett.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  Lucy took a long breath. “I don’t know…”

  “Lucy, do you know how many waiters there are in America?”

  “What?”

  “Just under two million! And do you know how many teachers?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Nearly four million!”

  What is this man talking about?

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that only five percent of those four million are top performers—natural born teachers who consistently lift their students’ test scores. You’re one of them, Lucy, and I want you back. I’ll get you top of the scale. I promise.”

  Lucy didn’t reply. She was watching her son, who seemed to be in a half-doze, and wondering what the hell just happened.

  “Lucy?”

  A few weeks ago, the tenants in her house in Bayonne had given notice that they wouldn’t be renewing their lease. They’d be moving out at the end of the month. For the first time in over two years, the house would be vacant.

  Was it time?

  Was it time to stop leaning on her sister?

  Was it time to grit her teeth and face reality?

  Was the universe really trying to tell her something?

  “Lucy? Are you there?”

  “Yes, Garrett, I’m here.”

  “I know this is a bit sudden, but what do you say?”

  “Are you talking … now? This term?”

  “Yeah. If you agree, I’ll use subs till you get here. As long as it’s not, like, months.”

  Lucy took a deep breath. “Can you give me a day to think about it?”

  “Of course!” He sounded elated. “Let me give you my number.”

  “I’ve got it. It’s on my phone.”

  “Right. Okay, call me! I’d love to have you back on staff, Lucy!”

  There were other things they could have discussed: Who else had he arranged to get transferred from their old school? Who got married? Who had an affair? Who got divorced? But Lucy wasn’t interested and Garrett Lindsay was too smart to introduce distractions. They said their good-byes.

  Lucy already knew she wouldn’t need a day to make up her mind. She resisted the temptation to walk over to the main house to talk to Ricki. And, although Jeff had always been a sensible adviser, she discarded the idea of calling him at the office. One word to either of them and she’d be drawn into a family conference. Her ailing father, who doted on his grandson Kevin, would be dragged into it. The discussion would become a swirl of logic mixed with emotion.

  No, the decision needed to be hers and hers alone, unaffected by concerned advice from the people who loved her, and whose first instinct would be to protect her.

  She eased out from under Kevin, who was now fast asleep, and went to the kitchen. She brewed a cup of peppermint tea. She settled into her favorite chair to think.

  Forty minutes later, she picked up the phone and called her property agent in Bayonne. She instructed him to take her house off the rental market. Then she called Dr. Avedon’s office and canceled their appointments.

  When Kevin woke up, she told him they were going home.

  “Where’s that, Mommy?”

  “Bayonne.”

  His reaction baffled her. He just blinked and then asked what they were having for dinner.

  But, the next morning, she noticed his limp was gone.

  4

  The carjackers’ victim had survived. The doctors said it had been touch-and-go. When the woman’s head hit the pavement, she’d sustained a cracked skull and a subdural hematoma. But she was a tough lady. She’d pulled through without any mental deficits. When they showed her a photo lineup, she’d immediately pointed out the man who had yanked her out of her car and batted her to the ground.

  It was the guy Ernie had shot.

  Jack’s own dead-eye performance before a half-dozen gaping motorists had earned hard questions from journalists and a stern letter of reprimand from his chief. But somehow that letter never made it to his service file. Official disapproval transformed to admiration when the full extent of Jack’s subsequent actions was revealed. Although, miraculously, the carjacker’s spray of gunfire had not struck human flesh, it had stitched the rear quarter panel of a passing car and shot out the tire. The crash Jack and Ernie heard behind them as they lay in the mud had involved that car and a plumbing company’s service truck that was traveling behind it. The car went into a spin, took a broadside hit from the overtaking truck and slammed into a lamppost.

  As Jack rushed toward the scene, he used his portable to tell the supervisor they needed an ambulance. “Make that two! And call the M.E.”

  The nose of the truck was jammed hard up against the side of a Hyundai sedan. The truck driver was vainly trying to start his engine, presumably to back it away, but the sickly whine of the starter underlined the futility of that effort. Jack could hear crying coming from inside the sedan. Several motorists were out of their cars, milling about, but keeping their distance. The strong smell of leaking gasoline explained their caution. Jack sprinted to the back of the truck, found a heavy pipe wrench, and then sprang onto the hood of the wrecked car. He smashed out the windshield and single-handedly extracted all three occupants—a father, mother, and their infant daughter. He had acted just in time. Seconds after they were freed, the car burst into flames. He yelled at everyone to move away and, with the help of the truck driver and a couple of male bystanders, carried each member of the injured family to a safer location. An ambulance crew arrived a few minutes later, followed shortly after by the fire crew Ernie Tait had called in when he spotted the fire from across the highway.

  * * *

  In the end, at a Memorial Day ceremony held a week ago at St. Henry’s Church, both Ernie and Jack had received valor awards for their actions.

  On top of that, based on leads Ernie and Jack developed, a carjacking ring had been rolled up. Its leader, a man with the unlikely name of Edward Tudor, ran an auto wrecking yard in East Rutherford. He was currently in federal custody because the Bergen County prosecutor’s case against him was standing in line behind federal charges—those the result of a cache of military-grade weapons found on the wrecking yard premises. Apparently one of Tudor’s employee-carjackers had decided to help himself to one of the assault rifles.

  A week after the incident, Ernie admitted to Jack how he’d obtained their first lead. The procedure, he said, had involved a folding knife and a quiet threat. Well … quiet from Tait’s side at least. As he’d hiked across to the Rutkowski Park entrance, he’d slipped his trusty Schrade knife out of his pocket. He kneeled next to the man that Jack’s bullet had felled. He told him that he’d just have to wait his turn for an ambulance, because their first priorities would be the innocent road users his scumbag partner had shot up.

  “Assuming,” Tait added, “that it was him who did the shooting.”

  The thief was moaning with pain. “It was him, man! They call him Slider! He’s fuckin’ crazy!”

  “Was fuckin’ c
razy. He’s dead.”

  “It wasn’t me, I swear!”

  Tait ended this part of the discussion by shoving his knife blade up to the hilt into the wound in the man’s shattered lower leg. He let the guy shriek for a few seconds, and then he withdrew the steel. Blood flooded out after it.

  “What’d you do that for?” the thief gasped.

  “Wound looks really bad. In fact, it looks like you’re bleeding out. Bullet must’ve got an artery. I’m not medically trained, so I can’t say how long you’ll last.”

  “Pleeease! I need a doctor! I need an ambulance!”

  “Yes, you do. I’ll get one over here as soon as you tell me where you got that rifle. And who hired you.”

  “No one hired us!” he whined, but the lie was obvious.

  “No? You just decided to pull some lady out of her fancy car, knock her unconscious, and leave her on the side of the road? You just decided, what the hell, let’s take our trusty AR-15 along and hose down any cops that follow us? You did all that for a joyride?” Tait wiped down his knife on the guy’s cuff, folded the blade, and put it away. He stood up. “Well, I guess I’ll just wait here while you think about that.”

  Tait got exactly what he needed in less than a minute.

  Now, three months later, the BPD investigation was complete and the charges against two other carjacking crews—four young males with long lists of priors—were working their way through the courts in Hudson and Bergen Counties. Tait’s impromptu “interrogation” of the surviving carjacker, and the leads it provided, had helped break up a ring that had been operating for at least two years, if not longer. They’d been stealing luxury cars and high-end SUVs, presumably to break them up for much sought-after parts—although, strangely, not many auto parts directly traceable to stolen vehicles had been found on the wrecking yard’s premises.

  The Feds, meanwhile, had been trying to identify the actual owner of the operation in East Rutherford. Edward Tudor had only been the on-site manager. The U.S. attorney and the Bergen County prosecutor had both offered deals on sentence in return for his cooperation, but he was ignoring his own lawyer’s advice and refusing to talk. He’d made it clear that if he rolled, he was a dead man. A frustrated FBI agent had told Jack that the wrecking yard belonged to a company incorporated in New York—one that was owned, in turn, by a company incorporated in Delaware. The Feds had relied on the U.S. attorney’s subpoena powers to track their way through what turned out to be a network of shell companies. The trail had led from Delaware to Texas, Nevada, the Channel Islands, and back to Delaware before vanishing into an impenetrable maze of anonymous ownership. After weeks of relentless financial analysis, they still had no idea who was actually controlling any of the entities they had identified. “It’s fucking easier to find out the beneficial ownership of a company in the Cayman Islands than it is in some of our U.S. states!” the agent complained. All he could tell Jack was that they suspected the Mob was involved, but that was pure conjecture.

  Although he’d kept it to himself, Jack wasn’t comfortable with Tait’s revelation about his interview technique. Surprisingly, Michael Ortega, the young thief Tait had tortured—and there was no other word to describe it—hadn’t said a word about the knife incident to his attorney. Instead, in some unspoken trade-off, he’d taken a generous plea deal that Tait had helped arrange, and even agreed to testify if any of his fellow thieves forced a trial. The fact that the ATF had become deeply interested in Edward Tudor’s activities led Jack to believe there were other incentives being offered behind the scenes. He wondered if Ortega would end up serving any time at all.

  On the other hand, courtesy of Jack’s marksmanship, Ortega would be walking with a limp for the rest of his life.

  * * *

  As summer neared, Jack wasn’t thinking about carjacking rings, or roadside rescues, or sadistic interrogation techniques. He was thinking about the woman he loved. He was thinking about the approaching school vacation. He was thinking about taking some time off, flying down to Florida, visiting Lucy’s family, scuba diving in the Keys … and maybe, finally, starting a family of their own.

  He was thinking about that, and he was thinking about something else.

  He was thinking Ernie Tait knew more about Cal Parrish’s murder than he’d ever disclosed.

  5

  Moving north from Florida in the dead of winter hadn’t been an attractive prospect, but Garrett Lindsay had begged Lucy to be ready to start by the first of February, so here she was.

  Yes, here she was having an acute anxiety attack.

  She’d agreed to take over a sixth grade class, at a school she’d never seen, five years after she’d ceased teaching full time. Now, after three days on the road, she was rolling down Broadway, Bayonne’s anemic version of that iconic Manhattan thoroughfare, with Kevin asleep in his car seat behind her, returning to live in the state where the boy’s father had been murdered in cold blood.

  Returning, in part, because for some inexplicable reason her son had demanded the move.

  And because, for some equally inexplicable reason, she knew she must rebuild her life in the place that had given her the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow.

  Lucy Hendricks was wondering if she’d lost her mind.

  * * *

  Before they departed Florida, Lucy and Kevin spent an afternoon with her father at his assisted living residence near Tamiami Park. Lucy made lunch and, later, while Kevin kicked a soccer ball against the fence behind Joseph Cappelli’s small apartment, father and daughter sat together on the patio.

  Lucy had long ceased to notice the nasal cannula that was permanently attached to her father’s face, or the low hiss of his oxygen concentrator. But what did distract her was a conversation they had toward the end of the day.

  “He’s a good boy, Lucinda,” her father said.

  The boy in question was at that moment shrieking with delight as he and Joseph’s mutt terrier chased each other back and forth across the yard.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Here in Florida he has you, and he has this family. Up there, he will only have you.”

  “I know, Dad. But it’s time for me to stand back on my feet. For me, and for Kevin.”

  “You will be alone, a single woman, raising a boy to be a man.”

  Lucy knew the signs. Although her father’s eyes were tracking Kevin’s joyful antics, his mind was focused elsewhere. She had a pretty good idea what was coming next.

  “I’ll be strong. I have Nonna’s blood in my veins. Your grandson will be safe.”

  “Nonna saved my life.”

  “I wish I had known her.”

  “Some days she would walk miles—seven, eight, even ten miles—searching for wild greens. Filling sacks with wild cabbage, asparagus, chicory, fennel. Greens she could only sell for pennies, Lucinda! Pennies!”

  “I remember the stories.”

  “And, snails! The vermiculatas … they were the fat ones. She didn’t need so many to make a stew. But they disappear at first light, so she’d get up at three or four in the morning. Sometimes she took me with her, but not often. She wanted me to get my sleep, for school. She wanted me to finish school.”

  “You told us.”

  “She was a great woman, your grandmother.” His eyes were damp as he reached across the space between their chairs. She felt his bony fingers clasp her forearm. “It was just her and me. She would have killed to protect me.” There was a deep coldness in his voice. Lucy wasn’t sure how to reply, but he wasn’t waiting for a response. “Instead, she sacrificed her own life to keep us safe. Me. Your mother. Erica, who had just been born. And, because of that … you, my dear daughter.”

  The words set Lucy’s mind tumbling.

  “What do you mean? You always said she died before you could bring her over! You always said everything was set, and she was planning to come!”

  “It was, and she was. But the immigration papers didn’t get to her in time.”

&nbs
p; “In time for what?”

  Seconds ticked. The oxygen concentrator hissed and clicked, cycling faster.

  “Never mind. Just protect that boy.” His voice was gravel.

  * * *

  The temperature was hovering in the twenties and there was snow on the ground, but at least her Chevy’s heater was working and the street ahead had been cleared. She rolled south toward Bergen Point.

  Kevin’s voice startled her. “We missed the turn!”

  “What?”

  “The street, Mommy! It was back there!”

  Lucy checked the rearview mirror. Kevin was twisted in his seat, looking back.

  She slowed and pulled to the curb.

  “Honey, what do you mean?”

  “That one! I want to go there!”

  He was pointing at the corner of East Twenty-first.

  “Why? Our house is this way.”

  Kevin’s face contorted. “I want to go there!”

  At once curious and uneasy, Lucy pulled back onto Broadway, cut left onto East Nineteenth and backtracked on Avenue E.

  “That way!”

  She checked the mirror. Kevin was pointing to their right.

  Lucy suddenly knew where her son wanted to go, but she simply could not accept that he knew it himself. She tried to stifle the idea, to reject it out of hand, but her little boy’s expectant expression, as he strained against the straps of his car seat, made it impossible to ignore.

  She was assaulted by a nightmarish sensation.

  She made the turn. East Twenty-first was a one-way street, and the plows hadn’t scraped it as clean as Broadway, but it was passable. The road dove under the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail overpass. She stopped at the Prospect Avenue intersection, and then drove straight on.

  In the backseat, her four-year-old was silent.

  They neared the destination. As a final test, Lucy maintained her speed. She intended to drive on by if Kevin said nothing.

  “Mommy!”

  There was space at the curb on the right, next to an old yellow house with clapboard siding. She pulled over. She released her seatbelt and twisted around to look at her little boy. He was staring intently at a shabby three-story row house on the opposite side of the street. The building’s siding was painted a sickly green. A bent old woman wearing a heavy coat, with an empty net bag slung across her shoulder, had just emerged from the residence. She completed her unsteady descent down a short flight of stained concrete steps, noticed Lucy watching, glared suspiciously, and moved away.