John Goldbach - The Devil and the Detective

‘That went smoothly,’ said Darren.

‘Yeah. Something’s up.’

‘Clearly,’ said Darren.

We watched Bouvert make his way back into the restaurant and O’Meara walk eastward along the wharf, away from us. O’Meara walked and strung the gym bag around his chest and seemed carefree, from where I was sitting, with Darren in the delivery car, watching through binoculars. Everything seemed wrong, I thought. I felt a sense of anticipatory dread and its attendant nausea. Bouvert and O’Meara were too friendly and it all seemed too easy, I thought. I could tell Darren was thinking the same things. I saw movement in the bushes ahead of O’Meara. A thin man in a long black overcoat came out of the copse.

‘What’s going on?’ said Darren.

‘Someone’s coming out of the park.’

Someone who looked like Adamson emerged from the park and walked toward O’Meara. They were talking, at a distance. The person I thought was Adamson slowly and calmly produced a handgun from his overcoat pocket — a 9mm semi-automatic, I thought, but it was impossible to tell from the distance — drawing a bead on O’Meara.

‘Holy shit,’ I said.

‘Let’s go!’ said Darren, grabbing his nail gun and stuffing his camera into his coat pocket.

‘You stay here. Give me the gun. Take photos,’ I said.

‘But, Bob — ’

‘Don’t argue. There’s no time.’

I took the nail gun from Darren and got out of the hatchback and started running toward O’Meara and who I thought was Adamson. I was yelling. Darren was honking his car horn, holding down on it. They were too far away. O’Meara drew his gun, but by the time he had it out he had three bullets in him. I kept running, nail gun in hand, but the person I thought was Adamson ran off. In vain, I fired off a few nails in his direction. But I had to see if O’Meara was all right, if he was alive.

O’Meara lay bleeding on the ground with his hands covered in blood resting on his bleeding chest and stomach and the small gym bag strapped across his torso. I got down beside him, propping up his head.

‘Where’s your phone? I’ll call an ambulance.’

He didn’t say a word so I searched his coat pockets and dug it out myself. ‘What the fuck just happened?’ I said, dialing 911. O’Meara raised his hand and smacked the phone out of mine. ‘What? You want to die?’

O’Meara gave me a look and its meaning was clear. He attempted to prop himself up and began to take off the small gym bag but needed help.

‘You want that off?’ I said and helped him out of it. It was clear he was going to die, as he bled in my arms. His breathing was strained because he had holes in his chest and he was gut-shot. He looked me in the eye, then at the small gym bag, then looked me in the eye again, motioning with his forehead.

‘You want me to take the money,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Were you working for them? Were you working for the lawyers?’

He nodded.

‘Doing what?’

He just looked at me, unconcerned, moribund. He motioned at the money and then his eyes went out. I shook him, repeating his name, but nothing: O’Meara was dead. I looked around and grabbed the nail gun and grabbed the gym bag and left O’Meara’s Glock and wiped my fingerprints off his cell and ran toward the hatchback. When I got close enough, I motioned for Darren to stop honking the damn horn. He did. I ran up to the car and got in.

‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘No one seems to have heard a thing, looks like … ’

‘There’s no one around, except for in the restaurant, and no way they could hear gunshots from there.’

‘O’Meara’s dead, as I’m sure you could tell. He gave me the money, though.’ I held up the gym bag, unzipping it. ‘He couldn’t speak but he motioned for me to take it.’

‘Probably didn’t want to be found dead with sixty grand.’

‘That’s what I figured, too, but this isn’t sixty,’ I said, looking at the money in the gym bag. ‘It’s more like twenty grand or so but mainly in twenty-dollar bills.’

‘So they shortchanged him and killed him.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘What the fuck do we do?’

‘Well, we either take the money and split or we try and take these fuckers down. They just killed a cop.’

‘Bob, if they killed a cop, it’s because they can.’

‘So what do you propose we do?’

There was a tapping at Darren’s window and I looked up and it was a 9mm doing the tapping. ‘Get down,’ I said, and Darren ducked and I fired off several rounds from the nail gun and the driver-side window shattered and I wasn’t sure what had happened. ‘Start the car but keep down.’

Darren complied. Keeping down, I looked out the shattered window and saw the man I thought was Adamson drawing a bead on us. I fired off several more rounds and heard his 9mm fall to the ground. (I think I hit him, I thought.) I got out of the car and Darren followed, brandishing a baseball bat, and I ran toward the man I thought was Adamson, who was running off. I ran up to the 9mm and picked it up with my shirtsleeve, even though I doubted there was a single usable fingerprint on the gun.

‘Okay,’ I said, holding up the gun, catching my breath, ‘now we have the murder weapon and the loot. We probably have a photo or two, too, that turned out — at least of Bouvert paying off O’Meara.’

‘Who do we go to?’

‘The cops.’

‘You’re holding the weapon that murdered Detective Michael O’Meara.’

‘But we’re turning in the money,’ I said.

‘Bouvert and Adamson and whoever they work for, whether it’s the Andrewses or whoever, are powerful people. We’re not. They’ll arrest you for the murder of a police detective and then you’ll be killed before you stand trial.’

‘So what are you saying? We should take the money and run.’

‘Maybe.’

‘If we confront anyone with what we’ve got, it should be Bouvert. I’m sure he’s filling his fat face as we speak.’

There was no way I was letting Darren go into Diavolo Cucina, so I convinced him to wait in the car because it was integral to the plan, and in fact it was integral to the plan, I thought, namely, what little plan there was and there wasn’t much. Regardless, I wasn’t going to let him get hurt. I needed him to sit tight with the loot and the nail gun while I confronted the lawyer with the 9mm, a Browning Hi-Power ( Made In Belgium/Assembled In Portugal embossed on its barrel), the gun that killed Detective Michael O’Meara, Robbery-Homicide. I didn’t want to get my fingerprints all over it so Darren found a pair of gardening gloves in the trunk of the hatchback. I put them on.

‘If I’m not out of there in ten minutes,’ I said, ‘I want you to call the cops.’

‘But the cops’ll — ’

‘Darren, man, they’re the only option.’

‘What if I hear gunfire?’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not going in there to get in a firefight. I’m just bringing the gun to show him what we’ve got. Evidence. Protection, too, but mainly evidence. If we have the gun, then he’ll know we’re not bullshitting about the money, and then we’ve got him by the balls.’

‘The question remains. What if I hear gunshots?’

‘Call the cops.’

‘And then what?’

‘We find out what the hell has been happening.’

‘And then what?’

‘I don’t know. We turn Bouvert in.’

‘It won’t work.’

‘We extort him. Listen, we have to do something. These people are murdering people. I can go above the heads of the corrupt people he knows in this goddamn city, if that’s what has to be done. I’m a detective. With a shitload of evidence. Someone will listen. I know people too.’