John Abbott - Scimitar

Shots puckered the water everywhere around him.

“Help me!” he shouted.

And went under again.

The cold wet dark of the river.

Surfaced again not a moment later.

“Help!” he shouted.

There were men at the railing now. They opened fire at once.

“Help! Help!” he shouted.

And went under again in a hail of bullets.

“He’s failing!” someone shouted.

They spread out along the railing, guns ready, waiting for him to surface again.

“I think we hit him,” one of them whispered.

There was no blood on the water.

They kept waiting.

He did not surface again.

Elita wondered if drowning was a painful death. She hoped he had died in agony.

At ten twenty-seven on Sunday morning, the fifth day of July, in the corridor outside the intensive care unit of Beekman Hospital, Detective-Lieutenant Peter Hogan of the NYPD and Agent Alex Nichols of the CIA’s New York Office waited for word on the colleague with whom they’d briefly worked.

He’d been shot twice in the head.

Their conversation kept coming back to the events of the day before. Invariably, they kept wondering what the hell had been in Hemkar’s right hand. It had looked like some sort of bottle. But what had he planned to do with it? And why had he changed his mind?

“Couldn’t have been nitro,” Nichols said, “the way he was handling it.”

“That’s why burglars stopped using it,” Hogan said. “Your box men. Too unpredictable.”

“Box men?” Nichols asked.

“Safe-crackers,” Hogan said, flashing his expertise.

“Oh,” Nichols said, and both men fell silent.

On the hospital wall, the clock kept ticking.

“Did you happen to see him when he dove in?” Hogan asked.

“We all saw him,” Nichols said.

“So what’d he do with it? The bottle.”

“Tossed it in the water before he jumped. The bottle and the gun both. Deep-sixed them. A person can’t swim with his hands full, you know.”

“You think he even knew how to swim?”

“He chose the river, didn’t he?”

“Sure, but where else could he go?”

“Well, that’s true, but...”

“He probably didn’t know how strong those currents can get. Out there in the Narrows. Even a good swimmer could have trouble with them.”

“Assuming he was a good swimmer.”

“Did you see him go under three times?”

“What?”

“Before he drowned? They’re supposed to go under three times.”

“I wasn’t counting,” Nichols said.

He had begun wondering about that letter again. The fake Bush letter. Wondering how it had got into Quaddafi’s hands. And then suddenly he realized who was behind it all. Who was responsible for forging that letter and making certain it surfaced in Libya. Forgetting that Hogan knew nothing at all about the document, he said aloud, “Who really wants him dead, huh?”

“Huh?” Hogan said.

“Bush. Who wants him dead more than anybody on earth?”

“I don’t know,” Hogan said. “Who?”

“Whose country did he destroy?”

“I don’t know,” Hogan said. “Whose?”

“Bombed it right back into the eighteenth century,” Nichols said, nodding.

“I don’t know who you mean.”

“Can you think of a dictator who wears a mustache and a uniform?”

“Sure,” Hogan said. “Hitler.”

A doctor in a green surgical gown was coming down the corridor toward them.

“Are you the people with Mr. Dobbs?” he asked.

“Yes?” Nichols said.

The doctor hesitated. Nichols already knew from the look on his face that one of them would have to call Dobbs’s wife.

He only hoped Hogan would volunteer for the job.

Less than a mile away, in Battery Park, a Hassidic Jew wearing a rumpled dark suit, an equally rumpled black fedora, and a tieless white shirt, got off the first ferry to arrive from Liberty Island that morning.

No one paid him the slightest bit of attention.

They arrived at the Thirteenth Precinct downtown at a little past eleven o’clock that Sunday morning. They had gone there to talk to Detective-Lieutenant Albert Ryan, who’d invited Elita to his Homicide South office to ask whether or not he should clear her mother’s case.

“What does that mean, clear?” Elita asked him.

“Well, clear it. Stop the investigation.”

“Why do you need her permission to do that?” Geoffrey asked at once.

“I don’t, actually,” Ryan said. “This is a police matter, actually.”

“Then why are you asking her advice?” Geoffrey said, and Elita realized all at once that she had a champion.

“Well, the Westhampton Beach Police are already working the case, so if we clear it here, we’ll be saving a lot of duplication.”

“I see,” Elita said.

Never mind duplication. He was merely trying to save the city time and expense by stopping the investigation.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said, and turned away because she was on the verge of tears again. In her heart, she felt Sonny was the one who’d killed her mother. But suppose it had been someone else entirely? Suppose by giving her tacit approval to... clear the case, had he said? Suppose she did that, and the real killer escaped? Wouldn’t it be better to have the NYPD investigating in tandem with the Suffolk County cops? Weren’t the New York cops superior to a small-town police force?

“What are you truly concerned about, sir?” Geoffrey asked.

Her champion again. Directly to the point. Riding in on a white charger, her favor tucked into his gauntlet.

“I’m not concerned about anything,” Ryan said, far too casually. “Now that the likely perpetrator is dead, we’re just thinking of leaving the case to the department that had original juris...”

“That’s the key word, isn’t it?” Geoffrey said. “Likely.”

“Well, yes. We have no positive proof that Hemkar...”

“Exactly. But if you clear the case here... by the way, that doesn’t mean solving it, does it?”

“Well, no. Clearing is clearing, solving is solving. They’re two different things. Related, but different.”

“Related how?”

“In that the case would be closed.”

“I see. And if five years from now, someone turns up...”

“That would be Suffolk County’s...”

“... and confesses to having killed Elita’s mother and ten other women...”

“Suffolk would handle that eventuality.”

“But that wouldn’t look so good for New York, would it? That eventuality ?”

“The case originated in Suffolk. If somebody kills somebody in Indiana, and the body washes up in the East River...”

“But how would it look if New York cleared a case and then the killer turned up later?”

“Young man...”

“Merely asking,” Geoffrey said, and shrugged innocently.

Elita suddenly wanted to kiss him.

“If you’d like my advice,” she said. “I think...”

“Well, that’s why I asked you to...”

“I think New York should continue the investigation.”

“Certainly. We appreciate...”

“We don’t even know he’s dead,” she said.

“No, actually we don’t.”

“ If he’s the one who did it.”

“That’s right.”

“And if he isn’t the one, then you should find the one. You should find whoever’s responsible for my mother’s death.”

“I can assure you...”

“Because she lived in New York, you see.”

“Yes, I rea...”

“And she loved this city.”

The room went silent.

“And we owe her at least that much,” Elita said.