Bowerman headed back the
same way she came. My mind was racing and my stomach flipped. I had a heart-pounding desire to do something, I just didn’t know what.
Bowerman went straight back to the clinic and went inside. She stayed in there for about forty-five minutes while I waited down the block for her. She came out alone, but with several duffel bags and headed back out. Al must’ve picked up on my nervous energy because he was sitting up, looking over the dashboard, rocking back and forth like he was trying to see what I was getting excited about.
It was now five thirty and Bowerman was headed out on another county route to God knows where. I had a horrible fear that I was following the wrong person and that I wasn’t even going to be near a place where I could help Shony. The phone rang again.
“Duff,” it was Jerry. “I found some shit out on Bowerman.”
“What is it?”
“First of all, Bowerman is her maiden name. Her married name is something else.”
“What?”
“Dunston. She’s married to the bald guy.”
“Holy shit—anything else?’
“I can’t find any record of her social worker certification. She’s listed as one in several employment references, but when you go to the Department of State website she’s not listed. I’m betting a lot of nonprofits never actually check certifications. There are also gaps on jobs and residences.”
“Jerry, the second you find anything else, call me.”
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.
I followed Bowerman as she headed south for about fifteen minutes. She then turned off the main road on to another series of dirt roads. I laid back and gave her a good mile head start because I didn’t want to get caught following her. I made two left-hand turns and wound up at a fork. It was hard to see, but when I pulled up close enough to read the street sign everything started to come together. I was outside County Road #2, exactly where I was this morning. Bowerman had just gone a different way to get here. She had come to meet her husband.
I drove the SUV down the road and parked it on the side in the tall grass. If I was going to go to Dunston’s house, I was going to have to do so without being noticed. I was also concerned about being able to maneuver Rudy’s car on these narrow dirt roads. If I played it wrong, it wouldn’t be hard to be cornered or run off the road.
I went in on foot and I didn’t waste any time. I left Al in the SUV, which he wasn’t pleased about, but I didn’t want anything else to think about.
I ran, trying to make up for the time I lost trailing Bowerman. I got within a hundred yards of Dunston’s house in about six or seven minutes. The van was parked behind the white truck and there were lights on in the house. I thought I heard some conversation, and I could see the silhouettes of several heads through the living room shade.
After about five minutes, Bowerman came out the front door with four young girls behind her in single file followed by Dunston and Tyrone. From where I stood, it looked like Shony was last in line, closest to Dunston. They loaded the kids into the van, Tyrone got in the driver’s seat and Bowerman rode shotgun. Dunston drove the pickup truck. They pulled out together and headed up the dirt road.
I gave them just a minute to get out of sight and I sprinted up the road behind them. I didn’t want to be seen, but I was more afraid of losing them. It was about five o’clock and the webcast was due to start in a matter of hours.
They must have been going pretty fast, despite the dirt roads, because before I knew it, I had no sight of them. I had misjudged how fast they’d be moving, and now I was scared I had blown it.
I sprinted the mile back to the SUV. When I got within a couple hundred feet of the Navigator, I could hear Al and he was going off in a big way. He must have caught sight of Dunston’s truck and remembered his visit. When I got closer to the SUV, it obviously was something else.
Parked in front of the Navigator was the silver Crown Vic, and as I got to it my two old friends banged open the doors and headed straight toward me.
“Dombrowski, what did I tell you?” Pockmark said without breaking his angry stride. “I tried to warn you.”
That was it.
I had had it with this asshole. It was clear that he thought he was some sort of badass, probably because of his badge, but I’ve learned that when someone thinks he’s a badass, he picks up bad habits. Pockmark stormed at me, all full of piss and vinegar like I was supposed to shit my pants in fear. During his strut he got lazy reaching for his gun.
I rushed him hard and fast and he wasn’t ready. His eyes went wide and he went back on his heels, and that was just what I wanted. I faked a right by just cocking my shoulder and drilled him with a straight left. That was all it took and he went down and out.
“Hands in the air!” Blondie yelled. I had forgotten that he was even there. I looked him straight in the eye and he was trembling. Even though he was in a textbook shooter’s crouch like you see on TV, something in his body language told me there was no way he could pull the trigger.
There was too much adrenaline in my system to feel fear. Al was barking and I was focused on Shony.
“Hands in the air!” Blondie said with even less conviction.
I ran to the Navigator and took off. In the rearview mirror, Blondie went to check on his partner, and at that moment I’m sure he felt he had made a poor career choice. Lucky for me that I had come across a fresh academy grad with no stomach for the job.
Al was beside himself with a bad case of sensory overload. There was the sight of Dunston, the Crown Vic boys, and me belting Pockmark. That was a lot of stress in his world, but I didn’t have time to be real nurturing and I floored the SUV, barely keeping control on the dirt roads.
I came out on Route 44 and took a guess and went left. I had the SUV up to ninety-five, which on a country route is pretty frightening. After a few minutes, I saw some tail lights up ahead and I slowed. I didn’t want to kill any innocent bystanders, but also I didn’t want Dunston and his gang knowing it was me. I followed the taillights from a quarter-mile distance for another fifteen minutes until they went around a bend very close to the entrance to the town.
I was just a few hundred feet before the stoplight that marked the beginning of Kingsville and there was no one at the light. They were nowhere in sight and a shot of panic raced through me. I went another block through town, trying to keep the vehicle at a speed that would get me somewhere fast but allow me to keep looking for things.
I was coming up on the new halfway house, and what I saw made the little hairs on my neck stand up.
There, in the small halfway house parking lot, was Bowerman’s van and Dunston’s truck.
I parked the Navigator
three blocks away from the parking lot and killed the engine. Al recognized the pickup truck and started whining and shifting his weight back and forth again. I called Jerry to see if he had any new information. He said he was still working on it, but I let him know that I was outside the halfway house and I was getting ready to go in.
When I shut off the cell phone, I saw Dunston come out to the van and get the duffel bags that Bowerman had loaded. Then he went to the back of his pickup and got three tripods and a couple of brackets that held lighting. This was it; this was where the webcast was going down.
I sat in the Navigator trying to think things through. Chances were that there was going to be more than just a few people in there. Shit, Dunston was enough to worry about, let alone if he had any friends with him. I had ejected my Elvis tape and had the radio tuned in to the Yankees pre-game show. It was September 11 and the Yankees were playing the Mariners. They were doing a special moment of silence before the game. It was ironic—this was the game Gabbibb had offered me tickets to. Funny what a difference a couple of weeks made. Up until a little while ago, I was convinced the guy was about to set off a dirty bomb and ruin my hometown and maybe a good stretch of New York with it. Then, I thought of Clogger’s routine and how much it had changed his life around for him. I don’t know if he was the poster child for recovery, but he did seem to be happy with the slight changes he had made in his life. He had his wings back, he got to be involved with the Yankees, and was even making a decent buck flying Gabbibb’s electronic shit.
Hold it—
Clogger’s been delivering packages of electronic stuff for Gabbibb … He flies over Yankee Stadium, circling in front of sixty-thousand fans, before he delivers the packages to Staten Island …
I called Jerry.
“Yo, Sesame Street, this is Bert.”
“Jerry—how do you set off a dirty bomb?”
“You do it like you would a conventional device.”
“How?”
“Uh … let’s see, a remote device, an electronic transmitter … anything really … the new trend in the Mid-East is cell phones.”
“Oh no …”
“What’s the matter?”
“Clogger is delivering a box for Gabbibb. Gabbibb has given him a cell phone. Gabbibb may be setting off a dirty bomb in Clog’s plane with Clog in it over Yankee Stadium.”
“Holy shit … That would kill thousands and make the area around the stadium uninhabitable for years. But I thought they got the guys with the explosives and the radioactive shit,” Jerry said.
“Gabbibb has all that shit at his disposal through the hospital and the medical college. It’s got to be what’s happening.”
I signed off with Jerry and started to dial the FBI number. I stopped before I finished. If they knew Clogger was carrying a bomb they’d blow him out of the sky. I had to call Clogger.
I got his number and dialed.
“Hello,” it was a female voice. Probably his new live-in, Foon.
“This is Duffy from the clinic. Is Clogger in?”
“No, game night, he gone already.”
“Isn’t it early?”
“Clogger gone …” The language gap wasn’t going to make this very easy. I didn’t have the time to translate.
“I know, thanks.”
I hung up. I didn’t dare call Clogger for fear that his cell phone was rigged. What the fuck was I going to do? My mind raced, my body went cold, and I started to sweat.
Holy fuckin’ shit.
Holy fuckin’ shit.
Holy fuckin’ shit.
All right, the only thing left to do was to call the FBI and let them do what they had to do. I couldn’t let them blow Clogger out of the sky, but I couldn’t let a capacity-filled Yankee Stadium get blown away with some bullshit dirty nuke. I watched my fingers shake as I hit the keys.
9-1- … You’re fuckin’ kidding me …
The low battery light went on and then the phone went dark.
Holy fuckin’ shit.
All this and the Yanks were already down in the top of the first.
With nothing else left to do to help Clogger, I decided to do something about Shony. I gave Al a few strokes and told him to be cool. I left the car turned on so he would be warm and so he could listen to the
Blue Hawaii
soundtrack. I had no idea what I was about to do. There was no activity going on outside the building for now, so it made it easy to approach. I crossed the street and ran down the right side of the building. The outside of the building was surrounded by heavy brush, and as I shimmied my way along the wall, branches and switches raked across my face. There was no light coming from this side of the building, but by cupping my hands around my eyes I could peer in the windows and make out a bit of the interior. These were windows to the small bedroom suites and each suite had a single bed, a padded wooden chair, a small bathroom, and an adjacent room with a child’s bed in it. I peered in each of the windows as I made my way down the length of the building, hoping to find something that would help. All the bedrooms were dark and looked uninhabited until I got to the last window.
Pressing my face to the window, I could see the four girls were all sitting on the bed. Their hands were duct taped behind them, they had tape over their mouths, and they were all blindfolded. They sat side by side on the bed, and I was almost positive that the first one closest to the wall was Shony. The four of them twitched and rocked and, without being able to make a sound, still exuded the terror they were feeling.
I went along the back side of the building, and about halfway down I could see bright lights coming through the windows and I could hear the sound of two or three voices. I approached the corner of the first window carefully and looked in. It was the multipurpose room—the one we weren’t allowed to see on our tour. Now I understood why.
They were setting up cameras and lights at different angles and there was a king-size mattress in the center of a stark floor where I presumed the webcast would be staged. I didn’t recognize the three guys setting up the cameras and the lights. I looked at my watch and it was seven forty-five.
I went back around the building, passing the bedroom where the girls were kept. I headed out to the front of the building and looked across the sidewalk to the parking lot. I heard a couple of voices, one male and one female, followed by the sound of car doors closing. The car started and I jumped back, pressing my back against the side of the building. I saw the van pull away from the halfway house with Bowerman and Tyrone in it.
I walked around the front of the building back toward the parking lot. I guessed that the equipment was unloaded and there would be no reason for anyone to be coming out to the parking lot, except maybe for a smoke break. I figured they had just started, so it was unlikely they’d be taking a break soon. I tried to picture where the bedroom that the girls were in was in relation to this side of the building. I would have to go through a lobby, a small corridor, a dining room, and then another hallway to get to the bedroom. If they were all busy setting up, there was a chance they wouldn’t notice someone coming in. My one shot was to sprint in, get the door open, and rush the kids out. I sure couldn’t stand out here all night. Pretty soon there would be more people coming, and it would make any kind of rescue even harder.
I went through the side door quietly with my back sliding against the wall. I got through the lobby, looked around carefully, and headed up the corridor. At the threshold to the dining room, I looked both ways and ran through the dining room to the threshold on the other side. Through that threshold I could see the door that led to the multipurpose room where the webcast was going to take place. To the right was the corridor to the bedrooms.
I checked both ways and ran as fast as I could down the corridor to the last door on the right. I got to it and turned the knob, but it was locked. I slammed my shoulder as hard as I could into the door, but the jamb held. I slammed into it again and a small piece of the jamb broke away. I was all sweat and heartbeat when I threw myself into the door a third time. The jam splintered more, but not enough. I could hear the muffled sound of the girls screaming through their taped mouths when I heard another door close and footsteps up the corridor.
“Fuckin’ asshole, you just don’t learn, do you?” It was Dunston and he had a bat in his hand.
“You didn’t fuckin’ listen the last time,” he said. “Now you’re going to die. I just wish that ugly fuckin’ hound was here so I could kill him first in front of you so that was the last thing you ever saw.”
Dunston walked down the hallway without rushing, holding the bat in two hands and flexing his arms. My mind raced, and I had no idea how to defend myself. I put my guard up, figuring taking a bat on the arms was better than taking it on the head. Dunston’s face contorted as he swung the bat at my head. I turned my body away, lifted my arm and tried to raise my shoulder muscle. The bat landed across all three areas but I still caught 50 percent of it on the left side of my head. A flash of light seared across my eyes and I wobbled into the other side of the wall.
Dunston reared back and sent the bat into the ribs he bruised on his last visit. That made my whole diaphragm feel like it was caving in. I stumbled forward but somehow managed to keep my feet and moved up the corridor.
Dunston kicked me in the ass, moving me up to the end of the corridor to the lobby before the multipurpose room.
“I’m going to make this last,” Dunston said. “Why rush all the fun?” He swung the bat into my left thigh. The force moved me into the dining room and dropped me to one knee.
“Not hard to see how you got the boxing record you got, asshole. You don’t even fight back.” Dunston punctuated it with another kick, this time to the other side of my ribs, pushing me out of the dining room and into the corridor. I could hear the sounds of the street and the occasional sound of a car passing, but it was at such a distance, a yell for help wouldn’t have done me any good.
Dunston stepped over me dramatically and leaned on the threshold at the end of the corridor, resting the bat on his shoulder like he was on deck at Yankee Stadium. He had a big grin come to his face as he stood in front of me with his back to the door.
“What the fuck do you care about a bunch of crack whores anyway?” he said, shaking his head. “I had the girls do your friend Walanda inside because she talked too much. Stupid whore blabberin’ about the ‘Webster.’ Didn’t even get the name right. Probably had no idea what a webmaster is. Then there’s all your park buddies—fags and bums. Duffy, you’re a fool,” he said.
Dunston paced in front of me with the bat on his shoulder.
“Why’d you want to ruin a good thing? Now you’re going to die, and for what? To save a bunch of crack whores?” Dunston shook his head in mock disbelief and gripped the bat and took a step toward me.
I was trying to think how I could protect my head and stay alive, but I wasn’t sure I had the strength. Dunston spit into his hands like a hitter and cocked the bat.
That’s when I heard the barking.
Looking up through Dunston’s legs I saw the blur of black, brown, and white, and I heard a growl that was not of this earth. It was Al and he was airborne, teeth bared and headed for Dunston.
Before Dunston could react, Al had Dunston’s arm between his teeth and was working it like one of my sofa cushions. Dunston dropped the bat and Al scooped it up in his mouth and ran back out the side door. I was on my feet, the life was back in my veins, and the pain was on hold. Dunston stood five feet in front of me, and without a weapon in his hand he looked like an entirely different man.
“Now you’re mine, motherfucker,” I said.
I stepped toward Dunston and he threw a big right hand. It was probably the type of punch that made him legendary in bar fights or on the tough-guy bike circuit. It was hard and it would hurt, but it was way too wide and way too slow. I stepped in on it and buried a jab right on his nose. I felt it break under my knuckles and I heard Dunston let out a half moan, half whimper.
The jab sent him into the wall where he tried to cover up. I dug a punch to his solar plexus that took the wind right out of him and brought his guard down. I came back up top and drilled a left cross into his already shattered nose. The speed of my punches and the wall behind him kept him up as he tried in vain to protect himself.
I hit him again with the straight left and this time instinctively I added a right hook. With my left hand recoiling back to my chest and my lower body pivoting, I let go of my right hook and for the first time—the very first fuckin’ time—I felt the click in my hips that Smitty had been telling me about for fifteen years. It was a wonderful click.
The hook landed just over his ear and it forced Dunston into the space between the wall and the threshold. He was still standing, wedged into the wall and trapped. It wasn’t a time for mercy and it wasn’t a time for justice, it was a time for something else entirely.
Something inside of me released and I let go with a fury that transcended the physical. This piece of shit in front of me was evil, and I felt everything in me let go. With Walanda’s memory, the girls he and Tyrone were about to defile, the guys from the park, and enough of my own personal business all running through me, I beat Dunston with everything I had.
I don’t know how many more hooks I threw to Dunston’s head. Blood gushed through his mouth and his nose was in three different bloody pieces of tissue across his face. Each shot forced more blood to come out of him like water comes out of a drowning victim. I wound up for one more hook when I heard the blast and a piercing flash of heat in my left shoulder. The force of it spun me off of Dunston and on to the ground.
I had been shot in the shoulder.