Suspension Page 23

  “Nope, Tom won’t take long getting the message. Of course, I have a contingency plan in case he proves hard of hearing. Tommy does have his weak spots, after all.” Coffin smiled wickedly.

  Captain Thaddeus Sangree sat at his desk, writing a note to his contacts in Richmond. The meeting the night before had been productive. Sullivan had suggested an idea that showed great promise. He said it had occurred to him while he was up in the cables, tying off the suspenders and stays. Basically it was just a refinement of their original plan, but it could turn out to be a critical piece in the puzzle of demolition. The simplicity and economy of the idea coupled with its enormous potential had great appeal. In truth, they wouldn’t need to actually sever all the cable and roadway beam connections. All that was necessary was to sever some, and weaken the others enough so that the weight of the bridge would do the rest. Based on the tests they had already conducted, Thaddeus was sure this was the plan that would bring down the bridge.

  Early on, when the towers were still under construction, Emmons had come up with the idea of planting dynamite in the hollow base of each tower. An explosion within the enclosed tower would be devastating and, with enough explosive, could have literally brought down the bridge like a house of cards. As attractive as the notion was, eventually they had rejected it. To do so before the bridge was finished wasted the symbolism of the act. It would also have meant that any dynamite planted in the hollow towers would have to sit there for years, until the bridge was finished. There was no way they could be certain that dampness and age wouldn’t result in a big fizzle.

  The plan they had agreed upon had its pluses and minuses too. No plan was perfect. But it had a certain economy and simplicity to it that seemed to bode well for its success. The captain chuckled when he thought of Roebling’s reaction.

  “I wouldn’t be you for all the gold in California,” he said to the window. Though Thaddeus couldn’t actually see Roebling’s big brownstone from his office, he knew the direction in which it lay. He often found himself talking to Roebling. He would face out his window, imagining him there in Brooklyn, a broken cripple, barely able to feed himself or move about the house. It amused the captain to think of him so. “I wish I could be there to see your face: the horror, the disbelief. It will be too much for the mind to grasp, too enormous, too awful. Will you cry out? I wonder. Will the shock alone kill? You are frail. Any shock might be fatal. Been known to happen and to healthier men than you.” He chuckled at the thought of Roebling’s death—the despair and defeat. “Will you bring yourself to watch? Will you watch the bodies as they splash, or will your eyes see only the bridge? Guess I’ll never know,” Thaddeus mused. He could imagine, though, and he gloated in his conjured images.

  The captain tried to go back to his writing, but his pen stayed poised an inch above the paper. He tried to think of what he had to say, but it wouldn’t come. There was just one thing that he could think of. It kept repeating in his head, and before he thought of what he was doing his hand had written it out. “I live for the day” was scrawled across the page.

  “Damn!” the captain cursed, crumpling the paper and starting over.

  Tom had gotten out of bed late. It was ten-thirty by the time he’d had a snuggle with Mary, got himself dressed and ready to head out. Mary’s cook, known simply as “Cookie,” had fixed him some eggs and bacon, which he wolfed down. He was feeling guilty. Despite the fact that he had plenty of good reasons for lying in bed, like a concussion, stitches, and a still-swollen hand, he felt the need to get moving on the Bucklin case. It gnawed at the back of his mind constantly, particularly now that his head was spinning a bit less. He remembered old man Bucklin’s words, and as he left Mary’s place, he jangled the little key in his pocket. He’d find out what the hell was going on with the bridge and who had killed Terrence for that matter too, but there was one place he needed to stop first.

  He hadn’t been home in four days, and he worried about Grant and Lee. Even though Sam had said he’d look after them, he knew how they could get when he left them alone for too long. It would be guerilla warfare with the two of them waging a relentless campaign of furniture scratching, carpet soiling, and general mischief. He was outnumbered and outflanked. He’d stop by just for a minute, just to see that they were okay, he told himself, then it would be back to business.

  He hailed a cab and headed downtown. It was going to be a longish ride; the midmorning traffic was heavy. In some places they moved at not much better than a walking pace. Tom sat back and tried to enjoy the ride. Considering what his last cab ride had been like, that wasn’t too difficult. He remembered suddenly that it was already April 3 and he hadn’t made his collections. Cursing to himself, he figured that he had at least a dozen stops to make. It wouldn’t do to have the criminal element thinking he was getting lax. Those types would start pushing back real quick if they saw a weakness. He made a mental list of the three or four most difficult of his clientele, figuring to visit those first. He didn’t want to waste too much time even on this, not with the Bucklin business still hanging above his head. If he kept the hard cases in line, the word would get out that he wasn’t getting slack. Being slack with that crowd was like blood in the water to sharks; he’d get eaten alive.

  Tom tried to figure the most efficient route to make his collections. He wanted to end up on the Lower East Side, because he planned on paying a visit to the Bucklins, to ask them a few more questions. Tom jingled the key again, rolling it about along with his change. Would the key yield any secrets? There had to be something, some other bit of information they had but perhaps weren’t even aware of. What was going on with the bridge he couldn’t figure, but as Martin had said, there had been plenty of strange things happening during the construction, from payoffs, to fire, to fraud and death. It could be anything.

  The cab pulled to a creaking, rattling stop on the cobbles in front of Colonnade Row. Tom got out, paid the driver, and went in. In the hall he passed Mrs. Aurelio’s door. He could hear his downstairs neighbor singing Italian opera to the accompaniment of her gramophone. He was no judge of opera, but he figured the old lady was about as bad as he’d heard and louder than most. She was nearly deaf, and when she took a notion to start singing, the whole building knew it. Of course, in Italian, he couldn’t really tell how badly she was butchering what she sang. Her late husband had been a butcher, and it seemed that she, in her own way, carried on the tradition.

  Tom went up the wide staircase to the second floor, propelled by Mrs. Aurelio’s operatics. He was so distracted by the music and her singing that he almost didn’t notice that his front door was unlatched. The open door was like an alarm bell clanging in his head. He drew back the key like a burned finger from a hot stove. The key went back in his pocket. The Colt came out of his holster. Tom noticed his palm was already wet. He stood aside, afraid he might be shot through the door. With his left hand he reached slowly for the knob. But, as he touched it, he pulled back a second time.

  “Son of a bitch, now what am I gonna do?” he grumbled under his breath. He remembered the squeaky hinge. What once seemed like a minor annoyance, or a sort of homey welcome, now took on the aspect of a death knell.

  Tom stood outside the door for what seemed like a long time, though it was barely a minute. He could already hear that damn hinge like a siren for anyone waiting inside. He considered just waiting in the hall, but that wasn’t something he had the temperament to do. It could be that Sam had just forgotten to close the door all the way, or maybe Mrs. Aurelio, when she let the iceman in. Tom knew he’d be healthier not to assume those sorts of causes. “Well, Tommy boy, you’re a cop, you’ve got a gun, you can’t stand out here forever,” he whispered to himself. Tom crouched low, Colt in his right hand, left on the doorknob. His heart was pounding in his chest, galloping at full tilt. As gently as he knew how, he pushed the door in. It swung open, silent as a snake. Nothing. On careful cat’s-paws Tom crept into his front hall, Colt held in both hands close in front of
him. He had once seen a cop have his gun knocked from a one-handed grip. It had almost cost that man his life. Tom had learned from the mistake. He heard a voice in the front room.

  Shit! There must be two of them, he thought. His best guess was a couple of Coffin’s goons, come to pay him a little visit. But Tom didn’t care who it was. If they were in his place, they were where they shouldn’t be, and that was going to cost them. Two did present a problem, though.

  Grant must have heard him come in despite his pretensions at catlike stealth. The big cat came out of the door to the kitchen, and when he saw who it was, sneaking in his front door, he trotted over. With uncharacteristic abandon, Grant purred and rubbed himself against Tom’s legs, twining around his feet in delight. Beyond all caution and reason, Tom found himself reaching down to rub his head in a silent greeting. Another snatch of conversation from the front parlor brought him back to the job at hand, but he still couldn’t make it out over the bad opera from downstairs. He crept down the short hall, almost to the kitchen door. From there he could see a corner of the front room. He waited, crouched low, straining to detect any sound or movement. Movement caught his eye, and he realized there was a huge shadow on one wall, outlined by the light from his front windows. As he watched, a shadow arm rose with something in its hand, lifting it up over its head. It looked like a club, or a hammer. Images of Terrence Bucklin’s broken head danced through Tom’s brain.

  He slipped through the kitchen to his right, then around through his bedroom on the other side. Every step he took an agony of tension. At any instant he expected a desperate, brief struggle: life or death on the kitchen floor. At last he was in position, his back against the wall beside the door to the parlor. Grant had followed, indignant at the lack of a proper greeting. Tom’s heart was still racing. Sweat ran down his back in icy tentacles. He tried to calm his nerves, taking big gulps of air. He figured he’d go for the shadow-man first. The one he was talking to was probably in the red chair. That would be the second target.

  With a final draft of air, Tom whirled into the open doorway, the Colt held out like a talisman.

  “Police! Drop it!” he shouted. The form before him was backlit by the glow from the windows behind. Tom couldn’t see precisely who it was, but there was something familiar about him. “Drop it, I said!” A tremendous, explosive bang shook the room. Tom could feel it through the floor. Like a lightning bolt, a sheet of flame erupted from the barrel of the Colt. The explosion in the room had Tom’s ears ringing instantly. Lee screeched, jumping straight up from the red chair. She streaked through the parlor, headed for the kitchen, her back and tail stiff as a bottle brush.

  The shadow-man still stood, then he gave a strangled shout. “Jesus, don’t shoot me! Sam just sent me to feed your cats.”

  “Jaffey! Christ … if I hadn’t recognized you!” Tom gasped. “What the hell was that in your hand?”

  “Dumbbells. I was trying them out,” Jaffey said with a nervous laugh.

  “It’s a good thing I pulled my shot,” Tom said.

  “It’s my fault. I should have … But you were so fast. When you told me to drop it, I—I did,” Eli said quickly.

  “Shit!” Tom said, taking a deep breath. “I thought you were laying for me. Saw the shadow of the dumbbell … thought …”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jaffey said, nodding.

  Tom was looking around the room with a frown. “Who were you talking to. The cat?”

  “We’re pals,” Jaffey said sheepishly.

  Tom gave a strangled chuckle. He felt light-headed, giddy. A door slammed down below, followed by feet pounding up the stairs.

  “Whata-you do uppa-there? You knock-a my ceiling all over my flaw. Whata-you do? Wait-a till Mr. Tommy come-a home.”

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Tom said. “Have a seat. You look like you might fall down anyway.” Jaffey was feeling faint. It wasn’t every day he got shot at. He didn’t much care for the experience. He plopped himself into the big red chair that Lee had so recently vacated as Tom went to talk to Mrs. Aurelio. He heard them out in the hall—her yelling about her ceiling, Tom shouting to her that everything was all right and that he’d see to having her ceiling fixed. Conversations with her were always loud, he had learned. She couldn’t hear much otherwise. But this one was rattling the windows. Jaffey spent most of the time staring at the bullet hole in the wall near where he had been standing. His hands started to shake on the arms of the chair. After another minute of loud conversation the front door closed.

  From the hallway, Tom called, “Care for a beer, Jaffey? Don’t know about you, but I could use one.”

  Jaffey didn’t give the regulations a second thought this time. “Sure.”

  “Stout okay? It’s all I’ve got. I’m not sure it’s cold, though.”

  “Stout’s fine. There was fresh ice yesterday. It’s cold,” Jaffey called back.

  Tom came back a moment later, handing Jaffey a bottle. He looked at the hole in the wall and the litter of plaster dust on the floor. “Looks like I’ve got a little weekend project, don’t it?” He levered the porcelain top off the bottle and held it out to Jaffey. “Here’s to not blowing your head off.” A grim chuckle escaped them both.

  “I will drink to that, Detective,” Jaffey said, noticing that Tom’s hand had a bit of a tremor to it too. He began to feel better as the smooth, bitter stout slid down his throat.

  They sat there in Tom’s parlor for quite a while. In fact, it was a two-stout conversation. After a bit, Jaffey asked, “Remember when you knocked me out in the back of Paddy’s place? I asked you how you did it, but you said that was another story? Care to tell me now?”

  Tom grinned, remembering how he’d come to know about the ancient art of kung fu, and the beating he’d taken to learn the lesson.

  “Why not? A few years ago I was a roundsman in the Irish neighborhood around Chatham Square. Back then the Chinese were settling on Mott, Doyers, and Pell, and there probably weren’t more than oh, say, a thousand or so. Very tight-knit group too, mostly laborers from the Union Pacific and such. Called themselves the Tung people. Ninety-nine percent men. Very few women came over. Well, one day I broke up a fight on Doyers. This one fella was using some very fancy moves on this other Chinaman and generally giving him a good thrashing. When I stepped in … he starts in on me,” Tom said, slapping a hand to his chest. “Let me tell you, this little bastard was tough! Almost had me more than once. Quick as a cat, and comin’ at me from every angle. Hands, fists, feet, everything. Gave me a good beatin’ and I’m not ashamed to say it.” Tom paused to take a sip of his Clausen’s. “Drew a crowd too. I think some of the Chinese liked to see a white-devil get his ass kicked. Finally got lucky, laid him out with a left to the gut and a right to the jaw.” He swung his fists at the air. “The thing of it was, I found out later this fella was the scariest man in Chinatown. He did collection work for the tong. Got a lot of respect after that but I was curious … like you, about what kind of fighting he was doing. I figured if he could give me hell at his size—he was maybe five-six, one-twenty—then this was something worth knowing. To make a long story short, I joined up with a group of Chinese who were teaching and studying this stuff. They call it kung fu.” Tom remembered the first time he heard the words. “It’s not just a style of self-defense, it’s a whole philosophy. Not really Chinese originally. I think it was started in India. Anyway, the more advanced you get, the more mental it becomes. Master Kwan, the instructor, says it’s about channeling energy along the path of least resistance. When you do it right, that’s what it feels like, sort of a flowing feeling, smooth but powerful.” Tom seemed to gaze inward. “At first it’s all hard work, lots of stretching and exercises, learning new punches, blocks, kicks, and forms. But after a while, when all the elements start to come together, you stop thinking about what to do next and start to feel the flow. That’s when you’ll begin to be a dangerous person,” Tom said, looking at Eli over his bottle of stout. “I was the only white man in t
he society, and the only cop that ever took an interest. Took a ton of grief about it once they found out at the precinct.” Tom shook his head. “When my captain found out, he told me to drop it. Said we shouldn’t fraternize with the coolies. I went on the sly anyway. My captain wasn’t a bad guy really, but he had the usual dislike for the race.”

  “I can imagine. Not a lot of love for the Chinese around the department, though I’m not sure exactly why,” Jaffey said with a shrug.

  “True, but I learned a lot from them. Still got some good friends down there. I stop in for a workout every so often, just to keep the skills up.”

  “You think you could take me along next time you go?” Jaffey asked almost like an anxious boy.

  Tom seemed to consider this, and sipped his beer before answering. “We’ll see. I have to ask. They don’t let just anybody in. You have to know somebody, get the blessing of the teacher, or one of the head men from the tong. We’ll see.” Braddock was impressed with Jaffey for asking.

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate it. I’d be a real attentive student.” Jaffey said, eager to learn and willing to do whatever it took to be as tough as Braddock. He had a growing admiration for the man. The more he came to know him and the more he heard about him from Sam and others in the precinct, the more he realized that this was a cop to model himself after, a man whose footsteps he’d gladly follow. Jaffey had been in need of a hero, someone to take him under his wing and bring him along, teach him, toughen him, show him the ropes. He figured Braddock was about as good a model as he’d ever find.