Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.
—Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
Render therefore to all their dues.
—Romans XIII.7
None are so desolate but something dear,
Dearer than self, possesses or possess’d
A thought, and claims the homage of a tear.
—Byron, Childe Harold
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
1
Things are never as they seem.
The area was supposed to be clear, marked off with yellow NYPD crime scene tape, but Beam caught a glimpse of movement behind one of the parked cars and moved toward it.
One step, that was all he’d taken, and the figure hiding behind the parked Mercedes was off and running toward the garage exit. Beam could see by the way he moved that he was young, teens or twenties. Beam had just turned fifty-three. Convert that difference in years to distance, and there was a lot of it to make up. Still, Beam was on the run and gradually gaining.
The victim’s body had been removed, and the crime scene unit and other detectives had left. It was part of Beam’s method to hang around alone at a murder scene and take in what he could in the immense silence and stillness that followed violent death. Now and then, he discovered something.
He’d sure as hell made a discovery this time—probably the shooter.
His feet pounding the concrete floor, Beam yelled, “Halt! Police!”
That seemed to speed up the guy, a skinny kid dressed in jeans, a dark watch cap, and a black jacket, flailing his arms, and with long legs that could eat up the ground. He was making for the vast rectangle of light that was the exit from the garage to freedom, where he’d be lost in the crowded New York streets. Beam couldn’t risk taking a shot at him and would soon be outdistanced. The probable killer of the garage attendant, and he was getting away.
Can’t let that happen!
Beam had seconds to act or he’d lose the angle, and his bullet might ricochet out onto the sidewalk.
“Halt or I’ll shoot!”
Should it be a warning shot at the concrete ceiling? Or should he try to bring down the fleeing man before it was too late? One of those split second decisions you read and hear about in the media.
“Stop, damn it!”
The suspect lifted his knees higher, trying to draw more speed from his adrenaline-jacked body.
Beam stopped, spread his feet wide, and raised the revolver and held it before him in his right hand, bracing with his left.
Decision time.
But not for Beam.
The fleeing man suddenly skidded to a halt, at the same time whirling and dropping to one knee. It was a graceful, dancer’s movement made possible by youth.
He shot Beam.
It was like getting whapped in the thigh with a hammer.
Beam was on the hard concrete floor without knowing how he got there, fire pulsing in his right leg. He craned his neck and peered toward the garage exit and saw that the kid was getting away.
Rubber screeched out on the street, and there was the dull sound of impact. A woman shouted something over and over that Beam couldn’t understand.
He reached for his two-way. If the damned thing would work in the garage, he could get help, maybe nail the bastard on the street.
Then weakness came with the pain.
Then darkness.
Beam thought, Lani…
2
“What’s it been, bro?” Cassandra Beam asked. “A week?”
“Nine days,” Beam said. That was how long since he’d been released from the hospital into a bright spring day. His right leg still ached and wasn’t as strong as his left. He’d lost twenty pounds while laid up, and his clothes hung on him as if they were somebody else’s.
He was wearing a pale gray shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned and folded neatly halfway up his forearms. His face was so gaunt as to be almost vulpine, with blue eyes that could charm or cut steel, and an intensely curious, slightly lopsided expression due to a missing right earlobe that had been bitten off in a saloon fight his rookie year as a cop. Beam looked like a guy who’d been dragged bumping and thumping through life, resisting every inch.
The bullet fired in the parking garage had done only minimal damage to the bone, so he’d be able to walk soon without a cane. He was having lunch at Fostoria’s, on Central Park West, with his sister, Cassie, who was a psychiatrist with her office nearby. A long way from downtown, where they’d spent their childhood.
The restaurant’s tables were small and round, with lacy white tablecloths, and the place was filled with brilliant winter sunlight. They were waiting for their server to bring them their orders of croissant sandwiches. It looked to Beam as if everyone in the restaurant was eating something on a croissant.
Their table was by the window, and both had been watching people stream past out on the sidewalk. It was easier than talking.
“You were thinking about retiring anyway,” Cassie said.
She hadn’t done well in the gene pool. Unlike Beam, who was tall and rawboned, his older sister was short and blocky, in a sturdy way that dieting would never change. Her eyes were darker than his, too, staring at Beam now from beneath black bangs.
“Thinking about and doing are two different things,” Beam said.
Cassie gave him her gap-toothed smile. “You’re telling me that?”
Beam had to smile back. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget what you do for a living.”
“Getting shot, so soon after Lani, it was like a one-two punch.”
“Is that psychoanalyst talk?” Beam asked. “A one-two punch?”
Cassie took a sip of lime-flavored bottled water. “I’m not talking like an analyst now. More like a sister. Not that I don’t think analysis wouldn’t help you, but it should be done by another professional.”
“I’ll get through it,” Beam said. His wife of twenty-three years, Lani, had for reasons unknown leaped from the high balcony of her friend and business partner’s apartment, where she was attending a cocktail party and charity fund raiser. It was five months later when Beam had been surprised by the suspect in the parking garage, while investigating the robbery shooting of the attendant, and was shot in the leg. The shooter, who turned out to be twenty-two years old, with an impressive record of armed assault and burglary, had been struck and killed by a car in the street outside the garage exit. Beam’s final collar.